Portland Decides Against Boycotting Texas
Well, that threat didn't last very long.
The City of Portland will vote Wednesday on a proposal that basically wags their collective fingers at Texas, but doesn't boycott the State of Texas.
Two weeks ago, the mayor of Portland, Oregon made national news when he presented a plan to boycott the State of Texas. Mayor Ted Wheeler said at the time that the Portland City Council was ready to vote on the proposal that came about due to Texas' new abortion law which, for the most part, bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected.
According to Rebecca Ellis of OPB.org, the Portland City Council wanted to punish Texas for what it called "an attack on reproductive rights." A spokesperson with the City of Portland said that the city had purchased "just under $35 million of goods and services from Texas over the past five years."
But the Portland City Council won't be boycotting Texas any time soon. Instead, they will vote to send money to places that further "women's reproductive healthcare":
But the press release appeared to have come long before the policy making. City officials scrambled the last two weeks to nail down how such a boycott would work in practice, while pro-choice advocates raised concerns that the boycott was not the right tact, as Willamette Week reported. The editorial board of the OregonLive lambasted the city for “pointless preening,” focusing resources on a problem 2,000 miles away instead of the multitude of crises the city faces.
“The Portland City Council wishes to manifest its opposition to the Texas abortion ban, and its support for those who are affected by it, by ensuring that those who seek to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion have access to certified healthcare providers in safe and secure facilities,” the ordinance states.
So now that the boycott is over, Texas will only have to focus on lawsuits from the federal government and elsewhere over the bill which got little attention when passed and only began getting attention once it went into effect.