Texas town that outlawed abortion in June becomes a lightning rod for both sides of the nationwide debate

One of two pro-choice billboards on the edge of Waskom
(Photo from The Lilith Fund, which paid for the billboards)

Though there is no abortion clinic in Waskom, Texas, the city council voted in June to outlaw abortion at the suggestion of Right to Life of East Texas. Now the community of 2,189, which has styled itself the state's first "sanctuary city for the unborn," has become a lightning rod for the nation's abortion debate.

"Officials insisted it was a preventive measure, designed to allay the council’s fears that the signing of strict abortion bans in the neighboring state could prompt clinics to move across the border and into their town," Laura Hughes reports for The Washington Post. "Responding to the proclamation, abortion-rights activists from Austin, around 300 miles away, erected two billboards on the edge of town that asserted 'Abortion is freedom' and directed women needing care to a website with information on local services."

Waskom, Texas (Wikipedia map)

The fight isn't just between Waskom residents and outsiders. Though most local residents who spoke to the Post said they support the ordinance, "heated disagreements have broken out on local Facebook groups since the billboards appeared, and a small number of women have reached out to the billboard sponsors to thank them for their visible protest," Hughes reports. "Others in town said they were considering volunteering to collect signatures from those who oppose the ban and setting up a support network for those who need it."

Waskom resident Corey Gossens, 31, who works in the railroad industry, said he disagreed with the ban. "It baffles me how a group of all white middle-class men adopted an ordinance making abortion illegal within the city limits of Waskom," Gossens told the Post. "It’s been my personal experience that some people of this caliber in these small towns are in support of a pro-life stance only when it doesn’t directly involve their lives and their perfect little white-picket-fence world."

Local restaurant server Erin Grable, 47, a self-described Christian, told the Post she doesn't believe in abortion and said people should consider adoption instead. She rejected criticisms aimed at the all-male city council that passed the ordinance: "The thing they don’t want to tell you is that 90 percent of the people at that meeting were female," she told Hughes. "They want to say we are letting men make our decisions. I think that’s ridiculous. We are strong women in Texas; we know what we think and believe all by ourselves, and we will tell you."