Pro-life crowd still awaiting its time on the city agenda

Hallettsville city council once again faced packed chambers Monday night for the second month in a row as supporters of the “Sanctuary City for the Unborn” movement from both near and far arose to speak on the subject.

But rather than the usual rhetoric about when life begins, how we must provide a voice for those who truly cannot speak for themselves or how those they dub “abortion traffickers” deliberately target young, confused girls who find themselves in a bad way and subject them to damaging and even deadly procedures, Monday’s speakers sounded off with a solitary message all around, especially as the night progressed.

That is, let the issue be at least heard here in Hallettsville. Or simply put:

“Place it on the agenda.”

Not to be misunderstood, there was plenty of the rest as well. But as became clear, the more speakers who stepped up to the podium Monday, the single unifying message upon which all agreed was let it be heard.

Yet once again, as speakers faced back in February when the sanctuary city speakers first addressed council during the public comments portion of the city’s meeting, elected officials once again sat silent, unable to vote on or even address the issue publicly as it was once more not on the posted city agenda.

This despite the group receiving some rather positive comments from those on the council last month that it would be, and the group’s collection of some 600-plus signatures—including more than 120 collected that very day by two young ladies from Tyler who canvassed local neighborhoods, door to door and in-person, during the day Monday—who backed the measure locally.

Instead, council dealt with a couple of other measures that at least two of the speakers on the night’s sanctuary city measure—namely, Mark Lee Dickson from the Lubbock area, co-founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn, and Mike Cummings, a former councilman from Joaquin, a town in far East Texas, who led the movement as a councilman to establish his hometown as Texas’ fourth Sanctuary City for the Unborn—who obviously believed were directed at them and their prolife messaging, for they spoke on both items that night.

Those other measures included: 1.) The length of time on which people could speak on issues during the public comments portion of the meeting; and 2.) The procedures and policy by which people went through to place an item on the agenda.

The first item, though discussed by the council mainly to defend its placement on the agenda that particular night, was ultimately dropped altogether.

It seemed last month’s plethora of speakers on the same subject led a speaker on another measure—one that was ON the agenda—to walk out after he sat through a full hour of hearing public comments on the abortion issue, which was NOT on the agenda.

As Councilman Dean Madden pointed out, however, if the council were to consider shortening the length of time people gave to a subject, now was not the time. The council could and should wait until they did not have a hot topic before them to address speaker times, he said, a comment upon which his fellow aldermen seemed to agree.

Mind you, apart from city employees, representatives from the occasional business/organization with an item before the council, and the local press, council chambers have been all but vacant for months now.

The second item updated the council policy on when and how agenda items are placed on the agenda—they’re due, in writing, at City Hall before the first Friday of the month, monthly—with the understanding that Mayor Alice Jo Summers, has final say on which items make the cut and in which order those items will be handled at each meeting. 

In the interest of full disclosure, writer Bobby Horecka is a member of the Knights of Columbus Council 3081 in Shiner, an organization that has long supported an end to abortions.