A lawsuit over the City of San Antonio’s controversial but still undefined Reproductive Justice Fund made its way to a courtroom Thursday.
While the city’s legal team tries to get the case thrown out of court, the city council is close to finally discussing how to spend the money it set aside more than six months ago.
Anti-abortion groups sued the city in October, shortly after the city council created the new $500,000 fund. The city has not determined how the money will be used, but groups like the San Antonio Family Association (SAFA) believe it’s meant to help women access legal, out-of-state abortions by covering their travel costs.
“We think eventually that’s what’s going to take place. Incrementally, they’re going to do that, yes,” the group’s president, Michael Knuffke, said Thursday. “How they do — how they go about that, how they do it legally, I don’t know. But that is exactly the purpose for our case — is to stop it from happening.”
SAFA and Texas Right to Life are the primary plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which asks the court to declare the fund’s establishment in the budget invalid and that it can’t be used to fund any group “that ‘procures’ drug-induced abortions, aids or abets self-managed abortions in Texas, or aids or abets drug-induced abortions in which the pregnant woman swallows either of the two abortion-inducing drugs in Texas, or expels her unborn child in Texas.”
The City of San Antonio has asked the case be dismissed since there has been no decision yet on what services or programs the Reproductive Justice Fund will cover.
“The city could make any number of decisions about what to do with the Reproductive Justice Fund. It could decide to spend money on prenatal care, maternal health services, education, postpartum care. Abortion care is just one of many possibilities,” argued attorney Lauren Ditty in a Thursday court hearing, the first in the case.
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City Manager Erik Walsh initially said the council would discuss the parameters of the fund sometime that fall. More than six months later, that discussion still hasn’t happened, though it appears to be just around the bend.
San Antonio Metropolitan Health District staff are expected to present their recommendations on the fund’s use during an April 10 council meeting.
City Attorney Andy Segovia told KSAT he believed the council has had other priorities on which it wanted to focus first, and it’s difficult to schedule the council’s “B-Sessions,” which typically feature an in-depth discussion on one or two subjects.
“I would say it had nothing to do with the ongoing lawsuit,” Segovia said.
Metro Health will put out a request for proposals after the April 10 meeting, taking into account whatever council members said during the discussion, Segovia said. However, the council will only vote after Metro Health has chosen potential recipients and needs approval for the contracts.
See here for the background. The argument that it’s premature for a lawsuit since the funds haven’t been allocated yet has merit, but if any part of it does go towards abortion access in any form, we’re just delaying the inevitable. And when it does come to that, I remain pessimistic. The reason that fund was set up is also the reason why it’s almost certainly doomed in court, if not right away then later on when it gets to SCOTx. This is also an open invitation (not that any was needed) for the Republicans in the Lege to get even more involved in smacking cities around. I have a lot of sympathy and respect for what San Antonio’s City Council is trying to do. I just don’t think it has any chance of working, and could lead to further bad outcomes. The one positive thing that could happen is more fuel for the Legislative races; there are three potentially flippable districts in Bexar County, and each one represents a step towards saner government. I hope the people who are going to be disappointed and angry about how this turns out remember that. The Current has more.