On the night of Tuesday, December 15th, the Lubbock, Texas City Council passed a resolution accepting the request of Lubbock citizens to hold a referendum to vote for or against the proposed Sanctuary City for the Unborn Ordinance.

This ceremonial resolution begins the next phase of the Sanctuary City movement in Lubbock. While previous efforts were focused on pressuring the City Council to consider and pass the ordinance, now the pro-life advocates must move on to reaching out to individual voters within the city limits.

This referendum will be the culmination of many tireless hours of work on the part of the Initiating Committee.  The Lubbock City Council was reluctant to even consider the ordinance.  In fact, they only considered it once a group of concerned Lubbock citizens, including State Senator Charles Perry, gathered over 5,000 signatures for an official petition as per the Lubbock City Charter.  This petition forced the council to discuss the ordinance and to host a public hearing. After the City Council inevitably voted the ordinance down, the Initiating Committee of the petition had twenty days to file for referendum with the city.

The ordinance was widely criticized by the City Council as being unconstitutional, which many councilmen claimed as their reason for voting against the ordinance. The City Council sought legal aid from Olson & Olson law firm, a firm with family ties to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the nation.  Contrarily, the Council refused the free legal counsel of Jonathan F. Mitchell, former Solicitor General of Texas and former law clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Scalia.

Now that the Lubbock City Council has passed a resolution to accept the referendum request, the voters of Lubbock, Texas, will have the opportunity to make their voices heard on May 1st, 2021.  

Recently, Ackerly, Texas became the seventeenth city to outlaw abortion by passing the Sanctuary City for the Unborn Ordinance. 

Furthermore, Odessa, Texas, is on the radar for the Sanctuary City movement. In a runoff election on Tuesday, December 15th, Odessa citizens elected a new mayor and two new city council members, all whom have voiced support for the Sanctuary City Ordinance.

Mitchell D. Cochran is from Midland, Texas and is a graduate of Lubbock Christian University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. He is currently attending Calvary University for his Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling. Mitchell currently resides in Lubbock, Texas with his wife Katherine.