Commissioners in Lubbock county, Texas, voted on Monday to ban people from transporting others along local roads for abortions, making the county the largest yet to join recent anti-abortion efforts to restrict travel out of state for the procedure.

Just a day later, though, anti-abortion activists suffered a setback: on Tuesday, members of the city council of Amarillo, a city north of Lubbock, said that they would like more time to consider a similar ordinance.

These ordinances, which have already passed in three other counties, are the brainchildren of the anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson and lawyer Jonathan Mitchell. They are meant to stop what the pair have dubbed “abortion trafficking”, a term that has become increasingly popular among anti-abortion activists in the wake of Roe’s downfall. Idaho has already passed a first-in-the-nation law to restrict people’s ability to help minors leave the state for abortions, which the state also deems “abortion trafficking”.

Before the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, Dickson headed up an effort to convince cities, in Texas and beyond, to declare themselves “sanctuary cities for the unborn”. Mitchell was the legal architect behind a 2021 six-week abortion ban in Texas, which took effect despite flying in the face of Roe.

Like that six-week law, these anti-travel ordinances rely on a novel legal twist: rather than being enforced by the state, people will be able to file lawsuits against people who help abortion patients travel. Pregnant women will not be legally penalized.

The Monday vote in Lubbock, which is close to the border of New Mexico, was at times tense. One commissioner, Gilbert Flores, gave an impassioned speech about having his civil rights violated and not wanting to similarly restrict one of his young granddaughters’ rights.

“What if one of them rapes one of my 12-, 13-year-old kids? What am I gonna say? ‘Have the kid, it’s God-given’?” Flores said. “No. God does not give you everything. The devil gives you things, too.

“It’s a very, very personal issue here,” he continued. “I got to respect women’s rights. It’s your choice. You do what you want. It’s not just about you and your doctor. It’s about you and God.”

Dickson was one of the many people who spoke at the Lubbock hearing. He compared the movement to end abortion to the abolition of slavery.

“I long for the day, coast to coast, that abortion is considered a great moral, social and political wrong and that is outlawed in every single state,” Dickson said. “This ordinance fully supports the belief that unborn children are human beings and that they deserve the right to life.”