The San Antonio City Council approved the Reproductive Justice Fund on Thursday after over a year of debate.
The half-million-dollar fund will be used to counter the impact of the Texas abortion ban but will not support paying for women to travel out of state for abortion care.
The fund will be spent mainly on reproductive health public education, contraceptive access and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said he would support an additional fund that would pay for out of state abortion travel. “That’s been the source of all the controversy. And so I would support a conversation, a discussion, after this to allocate dollars specifically for those services,” he said.
The fund will be split between Empower House SA, Latched Support Inc., San Antonio AIDS Foundation and the YWCA of San Antonio.
The discussion about the fund at times became heated. District 3 Councilmember Phyllis Viagran condemned the overturning of Roe v. Wade and said women should be able to make their own decisions.
“It is an attack on women," she said. "It is trying to put them in a box and identify them. And you are more than welcome to get a vasectomy and get it reversed. Why aren’t we having those conversations?”
