The Travis County Healthcare District has voted unanimously to extend the five-year program that puts property tax dollars toward abortions. The decision came after hours of passionate debate on both sides of the issue.
At issue Thursday night was whether the Travis County Healthcare District should renew a program that distributes 450 thousand dollars a year in property tax dollars to three clinics that provide women's health services including abortions.
"The Travis County Healthcare District has a commitment to make decisions about medical services that are funded here locally and this is the decision that the board is facing tonight," said Christie Garbe, a spokesperson for the Travis County Healthcare District.
Jonathan Saenz of the Free Market Foundation says there's just one problem -- what the county is doing may be illegal.
"Its kind of fascinating that a the federal level we do not allow tax payer dollars to be used for abortion, at the state level here in Texas we do not allow state level money to be used to pay for abortions from the taxpayers so what you have is abortion providers that are really going around, well established current law and going down to the county level to access these types of funds," Saenz said.
At the meeting healthcare district board managers heard from elected officials as well as the public.
"We don't always agree on what we pay for everything that we pay taxes for, but all of these services are an important part of the continuum of care which is currently available to all women in our community," said Austin City Council member Bill Spellman.
"I fervently urge you to not force me and my family to unwillingly pay for abortions to use my property tax dollars to support a personally and morally repugnant and indefensible action," said Texas Railroad Commissioner Victor Carrillo.
"Insuring that women who do have insurance or who do not have financial resources still can make a choice about what they want to do about a particular pregnancy at a particular time in their lives is a good thing, it is sound policy and it's good medicine," said Terry Sallas-Merritt.
We live in very difficult economic times, this is not the time to use the hard earned money from productive taxpayers to pay for a procedure that is vigorously opposed by a large number of those taxpayers," said Jerri Lynn Ward.
One woman produced a stack of over 10 thousand petitions from Travis County residents who were opposed to using taxpayer money to fund abortions -- she reminded the board managers that's twice the number of people who voted for the healthcare district in the first place. Back to the legal aspect of all of this -- we're told the healthcare district could now be in for a legal fight after voting to continue the program.
