Rolla City Council on Monday rebuked an attempt by one of its aldermen to make the city the first in Missouri to adopt an ordinance that would make it a so-called "Sanctuary City for the Unborn."
Alderman Josh Vroman has been working with anti-anbortion advocates in Texas and St. Louis to move the legislation forward. He withdrew the legislation from consideration after criticism from several members of the council. Vroman said he would bring a new draft of the ordinance to the council in the coming weeks.
The proposed ordinance would have made it easier for people to sue medical providers that mail mifepristone and misoprostol, two pills commonly used in medication-assisted abortions in the U.S., to anyone in Rolla city limits. It would have allowed people to file those lawsuits in municipal court, citing the federal Comstock Act, a measure that criminalizes the mailing of certain materials.
Anti-abortion advocates claim the way the medications are distributed is not safe.
“These pills are coming into Rolla right now,” said Joe Dalton, founder of the Pregnancy Resource Center of Rolla, a group that discourages women from seeking abortions and provides pregnancy services. “So now you go to the internet and order them, no consultation, no nothing, and they show up here. That's a problem. That's scary to me.”
The FDA has stated the medications are safe if taken as directed. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is attempting to regulate and restrict their use.
It's unclear how Amendment 3, which voters passed in November and enshrines the right to an abortion in the state constitution, will impact their use.
Rolla Resident Jenny Cunningham told the council she and her husband want to start a family, but she is concerned about an ordinance that could affect her reproductive health care rights.
“This is a bounty hunter law. This turns citizen against citizen during the most terrible and tragic times that people can face in their lives,” she said. “This is not the community I thought we moved to that would even entertain something like this. It's appalling.”
The Sanctuary City for the Unborn organization has helped more than 60 cities in Texas, Ohio, Illinois, New Mexico and Nebraska adopt ordinances restricting access to abortion services at the municipal level.
Rolla would be the first in Missouri, and Mayor Lou Magdits said he doesn’t want to see that happen.
“Nobody else in the state has done this. So what does that tell me? It tells me we're about to be used,” he said. “And that's the part that I really feel uncomfortable with.”
The Rolla City Council is overwhelmingly conservative and its 10 Aldermen nearly unanimously describe themselves as pro-life.
But they also say the abortion issue and how Missouri implements Amendment 3 is up to the legislature and legal challenges at the statewide level, not municipal courtrooms.
“I feel like we are out of our lane,” said Alderman Matt Fridley. “This is a state issue. The state of Missouri should have done a better job of this.”
Fridley and other council members said they fear lawsuits and bad publicity for the city if they pass an ordinance that may have no real meaning or will be made moot by pending legal challenges to Missouri’s abortion restrictions.
Vroman said he doesn’t want to wait for the state to decide how to implement Amendment 3.
“Either we want to govern as local as possible or we do not and that's what this is, that's why I brought this,” he said.
Council opposition led Vroman to withdraw his motion. But he said he will reintroduce an ordinance in the coming weeks, although that will be at the beginning of the city’s legislative process.
