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LONGVIEW, Texas, February 28, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — An American pastor is promising free legal services to seven Texas cities facing lawsuits from a leftist civil liberties group, because they recently enacted laws banning abortion while proclaiming themselves “sanctuary cities” for the unborn.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Pastor Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right to Life of East Texas, said the lawsuit was a “meritless lawsuit brought to deter and intimidate cities from enacting these ordinances.”

Dickson then offered free legal help: “We have a legal team ready to defend these ordinances at no charge to the cities,” said Dickson. “We are prepared to defend all other cities that enact these laws at no charge to the taxpayers. We are eager to defend these ordinances in court.”

The left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against the Texas “sanctuary cities” for the unborn last Tuesday.

In a news release about the lawsuit, the ACLU says the cities’ pro-life laws label the organizations they are representing, Lilith Fund and Texas Equal Access Fund (TEA Fund), as criminal organizations for their pro-abortion stance. They also question whether the laws are constitutional.

The cities facing the ACLU lawsuit — Waskom, Naples, Joaquin, Tenaha, Rusk, Gary, and Wells — all recently enacted ordinances outlawing abortion becoming “sanctuary cities” for the unborn. 

An ordinance is a type of local regulation or law and carries a lot more legal weight than when a municipality simply enacts a resolution. 

Right to Life of East Texas is one of the main supporters behind efforts to have Texas municipalities enact pro-life ordinances.

The first Texas municipality to enact pro-life laws was the town of Waskom, whose City Council in a 5-0 vote banned medical and surgical abortions in June of 2019. In speaking about the ACLU lawsuit, the mayor of Waskom said he was not surprised about it and that the city will fight it.

“The ACLU thinks this is something we did to get attention to the city,” said Mayor Jesse Moore, adding, “But they do not have a clue as to how wrong they are. We passed the ordinance because it was the right thing to do, and we will fight this lawsuit to the very end and then some.”

In recent months, many Democrat-controlled states have passed extreme laws to expand abortion, and the entire field of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates all support taxpayer-funded abortions, including up to birth.

The ACLU has a history of advocating for left-leaning ideas and laws. In December of 2019, the organization demanded that tampons be provided in men’s washrooms to stop prejudice against “every person who menstruates.”

In November of the same year, on “International Men’s Day,” the ACLU declared on its Twitter page, “Men who get pregnant and give birth are men.”

Other cities and towns outside Texas, such as Roswell, New Mexico, have passed resolutions recognizing sanctuary status for the unborn.

Texas Right to Life has said the lawsuit is “baseless, selectively targeting smaller cities that have passed the ordinance, and filed by abortion advocacy organizations that cover for the real culprit: abortion businesses, which are evidently unwilling to join the lawsuit themselves.”

Dickson in a Facebook post yesterday mirrored the messaging from Texas Right to Life. He also used his post to promote an online petition from the website Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn, which promises help to cities to become sanctuary cities for the unborn.