AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- In the wake of a potential overturn of the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, one Austin City Council member is drafting a resolution that would aim to effectively "decriminalize" abortion in the city.
District 4 council member Jose "Chito" Vela, speaking with Politico, says he is working on a resolution that would call on the Austin Police Department to give the lowest priority to criminal enforcement, arrest, and investigation of abortions and related crimes, and add restrictions on the use of city funds and staff for such investigations.
The move, Vela says, would be similar to what the council and voters have recently done with low-level marijuana offenses in the city. Council members passed a resolution effectively decriminalizing the low-level offenses in 2020, and voters approved a citizen-led ballot initiative in May that codified those changes as an ordinance.
Vela is seeking to do the same with the city's response to a potential state ban on abortion - "no enforcement, no investigations, no arrests," he said on Twitter.
"This is not an academic conversation. This is a very real conversation where people’s lives could be destroyed by these criminal prosecutions," said Vela in an interview with Politico. "In Texas, you’re an adult at 17. We are looking at the prospect of a 17-year-old girl who has an unplanned pregnancy and is seeking an abortion [being] subjected to first-degree felony charges — up to 99 years in jail — and that’s just absolutely unacceptable."
Vela's resolution has yet to appear on the City Council agenda. The next regularly scheduled Council meeting is set for next Thursday, June 9. One more meeting will take place on June 16 before the council takes its traditional summer break, ahead of budget and tax rate hearings in August.
Vela's resolution is aiming to blunt the effect of Texas' so-called "trigger law", which was passed by the Legislature in 2019 and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott. It would virtually ban abortions in the state 30 days after the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, making performing an abortion a felony with an exception only to save the life of the mother or a risk of "substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
Doctors violating the Texas ban could face life in prison and fines of up to $100,000.