First Unitarian Church of Dallas Supports Pregnant People Traveling to New Mexico for Abortions

First Unitarian Church of Dallas, a Unitarian Universalist congregation, has since January supported pregnant people who want abortions and cannot obtain them in Texas. Abortion is again illegal in Texas and in more than a dozen other states since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned *Roe v. Wade* in *Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization* in June 2022. The congregation’s effort, described in a UU World report, sends pregnant people to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where abortion is legal.

The report follows one Dallas-area woman, identified as Lisa Simmons, who is 33 and has three children. She told UU World that she learned in October that she was pregnant, that the pregnancy was unplanned, and that she wanted to end it quickly. UU World withheld her real name for the article, and the name used in the report is the one it gives her.

Thirty-plus volunteers have joined the church’s effort, led by its senior minister, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Kanter. Volunteers help fly pregnant people to Albuquerque. The flights, support, and procedures at Albuquerque’s Southwestern Women’s Options clinic are funded by the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC). Peg Cronin, a church member who coordinated the volunteers, said that in the program’s early days about eight volunteers met at the church around 5 a.m. on flight days, when travelers were given breakfast before the trip. Travelers returned to Dallas that evening after their procedures.

The church’s involvement has a longer history. According to UU World, the Dallas congregation helped pregnant people in the 1960s by referring them to a doctor in East Texas who performed illegal procedures. Mary Lou Hoffman, a church women’s alliance member since 1964, said that after a 1968 UUA General Assembly resolution encouraged Unitarian Universalists to support expanded abortion rights, alliance leaders held a study group on abortion. Presenters included Linda Coffee, one of the lawyers who would argue *Roe v. Wade*. The report says alliance members also traveled to Austin with the congregation’s then-minister, the Rev. Dr. Dwight Brown, to urge a more permissive Texas abortion law, and that after receiving a $1,000 donation they helped fund a lawsuit against the state’s restrictive law and filed an amicus brief in *Roe*. Hoffman said, “For the most part, our part in *Roe v. Wade* has been unknown.”

After the 1973 *Roe* ruling, the report says, the congregation’s pro-choice work declined until new attacks on reproductive rights revived it. The current work began in earnest about seven years ago, when Kanter volunteered as a chaplain at Southwestern Women’s Center in Dallas. With the center’s co-owner, Dr. Curtis Boyd, who is an ordained Baptist minister and medical doctor and attended First Unitarian Church in the early 1960s, Kanter helped create a multifaith chaplaincy program to offer pastoral presence to patients deciding how to handle their pregnancies.

The report describes how Texas changes affected the work. Texas Senate Bill 8 took effect in September 2021, banning abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy and allowing private lawsuits against those who provide, aid, or abet an abortion after that point, unless it is determined to be medically necessary. Kanter said the Dallas center went from 100 patients a day to thirty. Boyd also operated the Albuquerque clinic, and Kanter and Boyd coordinated with New Mexico RCRC, a longtime partner. Test runs began in December 2021, and organizers settled on flying twenty pregnant people, called travelers, to Albuquerque every other week. The church began its support in January 2022.

The program stopped after the June 2022 Texas trigger law criminalized nearly all abortion in the state, with minimal exceptions to save a pregnant person’s life. According to the report, that law says anyone who helps a person access an abortion, even an out-of-state procedure, can be arrested. The Center for Reproductive Rights advised organizers to stop transporting travelers, and the last group flew on July 8. Kanter said, “We really did have to stop once the Dobbs case was decided,” and that it took time “to figure out how to do this legally again.” The program resumed in October 2022 under a coordinator. Ten people now fly to New Mexico each week, according to New Mexico RCRC Executive Director Joan Lamunyon Sanford. Because only those below the poverty line qualified, Southwestern Women’s Options in Dallas screened people for the program, a step the report links to a 2014 Guttmacher Institute finding that 49 percent of U.S. abortion patients lived below the federal poverty level and another 26 percent were from low-income households. Lamunyon Sanford also said limited abortion access has always fallen most heavily on Black and Indigenous people, people of color, and the LGBTQIA+ community. Simmons learned of the program from a friend who had an abortion earlier that year, and she met the group one early November morning. Her pregnancy ended later that day at an Albuquerque clinic, and she was home with her children that evening.

Lamunyon Sanford said the group’s capacity will depend on funding and on connections in Texas so that people know the service exists. New Mexico RCRC now handles all logistics, including screening travelers, and the church’s current involvement has not been disclosed. Kanter said, “We’re not breaking any laws. What we are doing is providing care and support in real ways via the chaplains. But no arrangements are being made by us or via anyone on this side of the border.”

Source: Read the original report