By Mary Margaret Olohan

A city in Southwest Ohio declared itself a “sanctuary city for the unborn” Tuesday evening, outlawing abortion within municipal limits.

The Lebanon city council voted unanimously to outlaw abortion after a contentious, four-hour long evening meeting, according to the Journal-News. One of the former city council members had resigned earlier that day, the publication reported.

https://twitter.com/PPAOhio/status/1397546185444012032?

The ordinance’s passage makes Lebanon the first city in Ohio and the 29th city in the nation to declare itself a Sanctuary City for the Unborn, according to the publication, noting that there already are no abortion clinics or abortion providers performing induced abortions in Lebanon or in Warren County.

“We’re hoping Lebanon is the first of many cities (in Ohio) to follow,” Meg DeBlase, executive director of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, told the Cincinnati Enquirer before the ordinance passed.“They’re really an approach to protect a city from an abortionist opening a business, from coming and selling abortion pills there.”

“Cities must be prepared,” Mark Lee Dickson, Founder of Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn, said in a statement. “The future of the abortion industry is not necessarily brick and mortar but abortion by mail or abortion by vending machine at a school or outside of a grocery store.”

Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio called the proposed ordinance “blatantly unconstitutional” and “just another political power play to scare people and cause confusion.”

The city is located in Ohio’s Warren County, where about 65% of residents voted Republican in both the 2020 and 2016 elections, Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn’s website noted, highlighting that this largely pro-GOP community opposes the progressive pro-abortion policies of President Joe Biden’s administration.

A number of cities in  Texas and Nebraska, and one in Utah, have already declared themselves sanctuary cities for the unborn, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union to file a lawsuit in February 2020 challenging Texas ordinances on behalf of the Lilith Fund and Texas Equal Access Fund (TEA Fund).

The Waskom City Council started the trend in June 2019, outlawing abortion within the city and declaring Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups “criminal organizations.”

Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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