Officials to consider sanctuary city status

Hallettsville could be well on its way to becoming Texas’ newest Sanctuary City.

But before you start thinking those making decisions at the Lavaca County seat have lost their ever-loving minds, trust us when we say, it’s not what it sounds like. In fact in this case, it’s nearly the exact opposite of what the words “sanctuary city” tend to mean in modern political circles.

Typically, the sanctuary city label gets tossed on towns where such status might work to skirt certain laws, like laws pertaining to immigration status, for example, or used in another context, laws dealing with certain classes of drugs. Just last November, voters in several Texas cities voted to decriminalize marijuana within their boundaries, including places as nearby as Lockhart and Bastrop, though within days of the election—which passed, incidentally, wherever they took place—the attorney general issued a statement instructing all law enforcement to continue with their sworn duties to uphold all laws of this state, rather than cherry pick which laws to uphold based on some local vote someplace.

In what Hallettsville city leaders have been asked to consider— and potentially, for other towns in the county, coming soon to a city council near you—is a sanctuary city status that works to ENHANCE a few recently passed Texas statutes, specifically, those tied to abortion and the other right to life concerns.

The Supreme Cort made headlines in 2023 when more than a half century after it offered an opinion that for decades stood as the basis for a woman’s right to choose between motherhood or terminating her pregnancy, returned the abortion issue back to the state level for residents there to decide.

Even prior to that ruling, however, Texas lawmakers were busy tightening the screws on abortion and its providers with the passage of what’s now known as the Heartbeat Bill. It essentially banned abortions whenever the fetus has a heartbeat of its own, which can occur even sooner than 12 weeks, which was the previous benchmark for when abortions were per abortion laws some of the toughest anywhere in the country.

It also set a precedent in that it introduced a new method of how the law would be enforced. Rather than making it a criminal offense—one the police might get involved with, or said another way, something the state was required to build a criminal case for— it empowered the average citizen to report violators, and rather than go after the women seeking abortions, it instead targeted its providers, holding them to account in the civil courts.

Even with some of the toughest laws on record, the practice was still accessible to some degree. And, some have held, that was simply NOT acceptable. Which is why on Tuesday, Feb. 18, councilmembers in Hallettsville were greeted by a standing room-only crowd, most of whom (14 individuals in all) had come for one purpose and one purpose alone: “To speak up for those who could not speak for themselves,” namely, the countless unborn children who were lost to abortions each year in our country.

It was for them that city leaders were asked to consider becoming a sanctuary city for the unborn, by passing certain local initiatives to further enhance state statutes as they pertain to abortions. Leading the local efforts was David Smolik, longtime principal at Sacred Heart Catholic School, who in his retired life remains an active fourth-degree member of the Hallettsville Knights of Columbus Council No. 2433, as well as a founding officer for the local Rise Up For Life committee. He introduced a young man named Mark Lee Dickson of Lubbock, the co-founder of Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn movement, who was brought in to help organize local leaders in their efforts to join the growing movement which to date includes some 70 cities and eight counties across seven states that have passed local ordinances officially banning abortion, its enablers and its providers from their boundaries. Fifty-three of those cities and six of the counties are from right here in the Lone Star State, Dickson said, including places like Lubbock, Abilene, San Angelo and Goliad, to name but a few. Smolik said he read about Dickson and his organization in May 2023, and after getting the go ahead from fellow Rise Up For Life committee members, Smolik contacted him to learn more about how the communities here in Lavaca County might join their efforts.

The newspaper caught up with the two men on Friday here in Hallettsville, after they had made their Tuesday council presentation and afterward, met with the local KC Councils in both Moulton and Shiner on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Abortion, quite simply, is the throwing away of a human life,” Dickson said. “I don’t intend to back off of it any until it is officially banned for good in our country.”

If everyone acts within the next four years, eliminating abortion in these United States is a very real possibility, Dickson said, especially now with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

“But he can’t do it all himself,” he said. “We’re just trying to help him out along the way.”

Even with the toughest abortion laws anywhere, Texas still receives a monthly average of about 2,800 morning-after kits—a sort of do-it-yourself chemically-induced abortion method—nor did it stop people like the group recently uncovered in the DFW area, who were secretly giving rides to expectant mothers up to Kansas, so they could have their abortions there, far away from the watchful eyes of Texas and her laws.

The Sanctuary City measure Dickson proposed, written by the former solicitor general for Texas, takes on what he dubbed the “abortion traffickers,” as well as companies like the ones who knowing sent morning after kits to a state that’s banned the practice.

In any case, success of the local sanctuary city measure now depends solely on the votes of local council members. The measure was not on the formal meeting agenda for last Tuesday’s meeting, so city leaders were not permitted to address it then.

They will need to take it up as part of the next regular meeting, scheduled for March 17, should they opt to become Texas’ next sanctuary city for the unborn.

In the interests of full disclosure, the writer of this story, Bobby Horecka, is a third-degree member of the Knights of Columbus Council No. 3081 in Shiner, a group that has long supported