The Freedom From Religion Foundation has recently placed an incisive digital billboard in Amarillo, Texas, to help counter an anti-abortion campaign commandeering 20 billboards there. The message on the display reads: “Keep your theology OFF my biology.”
Despite the billboard blitz by the “antis,” FFRF is pleased that the Amarillo City Council just rejected an anti-abortion travel ban. Following months of debate, the council rejected a policy forbidding the use of city roads and highways to seek an out-of-state abortion. Laudably, Amarillo Mayor Cole Stanley stated in opposing the proposal : “What you’re asking me to do . . . would exercise an authority I don’t believe I have.” The danger is not yet over, since the measure may still go out to voters this fall.
The proposal was opposed by the Potter-Randall County Medical Society, representing 400 area physicians, as well as the Reproductive Freedom Alliance. Amarillo resisted adopting the ordinance that reprehensibly has been passed by several other Texas cities, including Athens, Abilene, Plainview, San Angelo, Odessa, Muenster and Little River-Academy, and Mitchell, Goliad, Lubbock, Dawson, Cochran and Jack counties.
More than 171,000 women and pregnant persons, including 14,000 in Texas alone last year, have had to cross state borders to secure abortion care due to bans — hence the over-the-top proposals to make it illegal to travel on public roadways for the purpose of ending unwanted pregnancies.
FFRF was contacted by a representative of local groups such as the Reproductive Freedom Alliance to add its voice to counter the anti-abortion blitz.
Local abortion rights activists posing by the billboard.
“Recently, both anti-abortion and aggressively evangelical/fundamentalist Christian billboards have been funded even more than usual in the city,” reported a local FFRF member. “Just the other day, I saw one that read ‘Stop Abortion Trafficking’ and another that read ‘Buddha is Dead. Mohammed is Dead. Joe Smith is Dead. Only Jesus Lives.’”
FFRF will do whatever it can to push back against the religious propaganda.
“We’re proud to play a modest role in showing solidarity with those in Amarillo who believe in true religious liberty — including the right to control one’s own body,” comments Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members across the country, including more than 1,700 members in Texas. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
