AMARILLO — Texas’ urban cities can offer women a luxe birthing suite, equipped with high-tech monitoring for mom and the baby, spacious rooms and a full team to handle any emergency. That isn’t the case in the Panhandle, where just eight hospitals are scattered in the 26,000 square mile region. Instead of high-tech monitoring, women are hooked up to the most basic medical equipment in a cramped and outdated room.
There is no emergency team in the face of risks or complications, except in Amarillo. “Your small town hospitals may have the staff and some stirrups to handle a delivery,” said Lisa Dillard, director of Maternal Child Health for March of Dimes in Lubbock. “And just like a paramedic on the roadside, they will do the delivery.
” This medical desert lies in the backyard of Amarillo, where the long battle over abortion access has found a new front. Anti-abortion activists, led by Mark Lee Dickson, director of East Texas Right to Life, has pressured the city to approve an ordinance outlawing the use of city roads and highways for an abortion outside of Texas. Amarillo was chosen due to its proximity to states that offer abortion services.
On Tuesday, the conservative City Council the ordinance — delivering a major loss for the so-called sanctuary city movement. Now, a group of residents who successfully petitioned the council to consider the proposal must decide whether to ask voters in November to override the council’s decision. They are likely to do s.