Amarillo City Council listens to public comment on ‘Sanctuary City for the Unborn’

News Channel 10
By Sydnee Batzlaff
Published: Dec. 12, 2023 at 8:51 PM GMT-7

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - The Amarillo City Council met for a nearly six-hour session today.

Dozens showed up at today’s meeting to speak on an item that was not on the agenda, which is to establish Amarillo as a Sanctuary City for the Unborn.

Since this was not on the agenda, it was only a listening session for the council. There was no voting or discussion.

Supporters and opposers of the ordinance, representing both pro-life and pro-choice perspectives, filled the room and voiced their opinions.

“We believe in public comment, we want to hear from all of our citizens... This council is going to take their time, we’re not going to do anything last minute, underhanded, not going to take something up that you don’t know of,” said Mayor Cole Stanley, City of Amarillo.

Next Tuesday, the Amarillo City Council will hold a special work session at 3 p.m. in the hospitality room at the Amarillo Civic Center.

“I believe this work session next Tuesday should put us on solid footing of, you know, what has the state done and and is there anything that needs to be done further? And then can you do something further than that and still abide within state law and state code,” said Mayor Stanley.

There will be no public comment or vote at this session.

There’s a lot of parts to the ordinance and this session will allow the council to work through it, including the part about helping someone travel to receive an abortion.

“The ordinance that you’re referencing is not an ordinance that I’m in favor of. So what you’re talking about is the issue with that ordinance of, you know, we’re going to hold somebody potentially in a private right of action accountable to another individual that may or may not have any bearing you know, on that baby’s life. And so, like there’s a lot of issues in there. And so, what you’re getting to I think we’re gonna get to in that work session,” said Mayor Stanley.

As for a timeline on the process of this ordinance,

“I believe we’ll have direction over to staff in the month of December with the hopes that we could get something put up in January. Now we’ll have two meetings in January. I don’t know that we would make the first meeting, but if we didn’t make the first one, you’d make the second one hopefully and then the goal would be to put something up and put it forward with a second reading the following meeting,” said Mayor Stanley.

There’s also been some discussion on if this would be a council vote or something bigger.

“It’s going to depend on what we would settle on. So I think if you saw something that would be, you know, a restrictive measure or something like that that truly pertains to the typical role of a municipal local government, I think you’ll see council vote on that. I think if you put something out that’s for citizen to citizen, I think that will bring about the discussion of, you know, do we put this up called vote or would we vote on it? I’ve definitely heard quite a bit on both sides. And, you know, I can see both sides. But then I believe this council is trying to put themselves in a position where it will be something that council would have a decision on,” said Mayor Stanley.

Mayor Stanley believes after next Tuesday’s work session they’ll have a better direction.

“I think what you’re seeing council work on is the right role of government and how do we not infringe on anybody’s civil liberties and still protect life in the way in which we’ve seen the state of Texas do it,” said Mayor Stanley.