San Antonio City Council initially provided nearly $500,000 for certain services in November. The new allocation could fund controversial care.
SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio City Council agreed to add $100,000 to the city’s “Reproductive Justice Fund” to cover additional reproductive and sexual health gaps—including, potentially, helping to fund travel for abortions.
That still depends on which local organizations are awarded money, a process expected to kick into gear this summer. Thursday’s 6-5 vote comes five months after the mayor and city leaders approved awarding nearly half a million dollars to the Reproductive Justice Fund, though none of the four organizations receiving that money said they planned to use it for travel to receive an abortion.
That possibility has been a dominant point of debate among City Council and the focus of lawsuits filed against the city.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg supported the supplementary allocation Thursday, as did City Council members Sukh Kaur, Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, Phyllis Viagran, Teri Castillo and Melissa Cabello Havrda. Council members Adriana Rocha Garcia, Manny Pelaez, John Courage, Marina Alderete Gavito and Marc Whyte opposed it.
The Reproductive Justice Fund was born in 2023, shortly after Texas passed a near-total abortion law. When council members decided in November how to allocate the fund, none of that Reproductive Justice Fund money was distributed to help women travel out of state to get an abortion. Instead, the bulk of the money was allocated to provide prenatal support for 100 people in the form of doulas, mental health services, midwife visits, rent and utility assistance.
Later that month, however, five City Council members signed a memo addressed to Nirenberg pushing for an additional $100,000 to be added to specifically fund travel to abortion care.
According to the city, four organizations have expressed interest in using the funds for travel to abortion care: the Beat AIDS Coalition Trust, Jane’s Due Process, Suenos Sin Fronteras de Tejas,and the Young Women’s Christian Association of San Antonio.
For the members of Jane’s Due Process, the issue is emotional. Before the City Council meeting, a memorial was held with mariachis to remember the women who had lost their lives due to a lack of abortion care.
“People often think, ‘People just want abortions because they want one,'” said Ariana Rodriguez, a youth advocacy and community engagement manager for Jane’s Due Process. “There’s so many reasons people have abortions, and no matter what that reason is, people should be able to get that care. It’s not just that we care about abortion rights. We care about people being able to exist and thrive in our communities, and that means they need the care that they want.”
But the issue isn’t without controversy. Councilman Whyte was one of five members who voted against the proposal.
“Here we are today, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of our citizens’ money to send women out of state to receive abortion services,” Whyte said when the issue was debated back in June 2024. “This is the municipal government gone wild.”
“I don’t think it’s something I would be supportive of, spending city tax dollars in enabling a woman to go and have an abortion,” Courage added during a debate last April.