A proposal for the City of San Antonio to spend $100,000 on reproductive services, including out-of-state abortion navigation and travel assistance, died in committee Thursday after it failed to garner a majority vote.
Just two of City Council’s five-member Community Health Committee voted in favor of the measure: Councilwomen Teri Castillo (D5) and Phyllis Viagran (D3).
Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), who said she is “pro-choice,” voted against it and Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4), who is running to become mayor, abstained. Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1) was absent.
Alderete Gavito said she believes charitable nonprofits should fund abortion navigation, not “taxpayer dollars.”
Rocha Garcia said she had concerns about the technical, administrative process that led to the committee’s vote — she was not expecting a vote because the meeting’s agenda listed the issue “for briefing purposes only.”
The funding, which would have come out of the city’s health department, was intended to fill what some council members saw as a service gap in the original $500,000 Reproductive Justice Fund that was approved in November.
That did not include funding related to abortions — despite that being part of the intended purpose when the fund was first proposed by Castillo (D5) in response to a state law prohibiting abortions in nearly all circumstances and the U.S. Supreme Court revoking the federal right to abortion.
Instead, that money will be spent on other so-called “upstream” reproductive health services and initiatives, including health care navigation, contraceptives, prenatal support and education on sexually transmitted infections or STIs.
In a statement sent after the vote Thursday, Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6), who led the charge for a second round of funding for abortion access and is also running for mayor, accused “some members” of the committee of putting a “price tag on women’s lives in our city.”
“While other cities fight to protect their residents, our city had an opportunity to lead — and instead, we turned our backs,” Cabello Havrda added, noting that other major cities including Austin, Seattle, New York City and Chicago have abortion access funds.
About 35,500 Texans traveled for an abortion in 2023, according to abortion advocacy organization Guttmacher. At least three women have died in Texas due to delayed medical interventions as a result of the state’s abortion ban, according to ProPublica.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Sunday said the Legislature should amend the language of the state’s near-total abortion ban to address confusion over when doctors may terminate pregnancies, according to The Texas Tribune.
