In Texas, which has banned most abortions after six weeks of gestation, three counties recently passed ordinances allowing private citizens to sue anyone transporting pregnant women on local highways for abortions: Mitchell County in West Texas, Goliad County in South Texas and rural Cochran County, which borders New Mexico, where abortion is legal.
“They don’t actually ban travel, but they have that effect,” Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, and a leading historian of the abortion debate, told The Washington Times. “Beyond that, the concern is about one state attempting to project its laws across state lines to tell another what to do.”
However, constitutional law scholars say those legal battles are unlikely to reach the Supreme Court unless state officials criminally prosecute violators or a judge awards monetary damages in a civil lawsuit. So far, neither has happened. A lawsuit pending in a federal court in Boise says the law violates the constitutional right to interstate travel and First Amendment rights to “engage in expressive conduct, including providing monies and transportation for pregnant minors traveling within and outside of Idaho.”
Legal scholars say these cases may not go far in federal court without proof that the states have prevented anyone from traveling. In October 2021, the Miami Herald reported that the Biden administration was considering a domestic ban on travel to Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to shutter schools or require proof of vaccination as a condition for travel.
In July, 21 of the nation’s 24 Democratic governors met as a coalition in Los Angeles to devise ways to expand abortion access nationwide and help women from red states terminate pregnancies. Over the past few months, some Texas counties have likewise sought to keep pregnant women from traveling local highways to states offering abortion, citing a need to enforce the state law.
The ordinance threatens anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion, including surgery and pills obtained outside the county, with at least $10,000 in civil penalties.