In April, Mark Lee Dickson arrived on this 4,500-person city that hugs the Utah-Nevada border to pitch an ordinance banning abortion.

Dickson is the director of the anti-abortion group Right to Life of East Texas and founding father of one other organization that has spent the past few years traveling america trying to influence local governments to pass abortion bans.

“Sixty-five cities and two counties across america” have passed similar restrictions, he told members of the West Wendover City Council during a mid-April meeting. The bulk are in Texas, but recent successes in other states have buoyed Dickson and his group.

“We’re doing this in Virginia and Illinois and Montana and other places as well,” he said.

The hunt to enact local bans has develop into particularly acute in small towns, like West Wendover and Hobbs, Recent Mexico, that are situated by borders between states which have restricted abortion and states where laws preserve access. They’re crossroads where abortion advocates and providers have looked to ascertain clinics to serve people traveling from the massive swaths of the U.S. where states have banned or severely restricted abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned nearly 50-year-old nationwide abortion protections established by the court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.

Residents and leaders in West Wendover and lots of other towns and cities are grappling with the arrival of outdoor advocates, including Dickson, who now claim a stake within the governance of their small and otherwise quiet communities.

Dickson’s proposal to the West Wendover City Council got here after council members voted against issuing a constructing permit to California-based Planned Parenthood Mar Monte in March. Officials from the Planned Parenthood affiliate told the local board the power would offer primary care services along with abortion and other reproductive care. The vote followed hours of heated debate during public comment. Then, Mayor Jasie Holm vetoed the council’s decision, leaving the request for the permit in limbo.

Positioned in northeastern Nevada, West Wendover is greater than 100 miles by automobile from Elko, the county seat, 120 miles west from Salt Lake City, and 170 miles south from Twin Falls, Idaho. The town has been a strategic location for casinos and a marijuana dispensary, that are legal in Nevada but restricted in Utah and Idaho. Similarly, its proximity to states that moved to limit abortion access following the Dobbs decision overturning Roe has put a highlight on town.

Dickson’s anti-abortion proposal has drawn support from the town’s more conservative residents. But brothers Fernando and Marcos Cerros have challenged the anti-abortion efforts. Along with wanting to guard and expand access to abortion, they each saw the first care clinic that Planned Parenthood Mar Monte was searching for to ascertain as a possible victory of their rural community, which is designated a medically underserved area by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

Fernando Cerros, 22, said Planned Parenthood offered an answer to the realm’s health care shortage “on a silver platter.”

“And it was denied. I want to do what I can do to get it here,” he said.

The Cerros brothers have tried to prepare a gaggle to support abortion access and establish the Planned Parenthood clinic in West Wendover, but have found it difficult to sustain. They said they feel outnumbered by residents who support Dickson. Marcos Cerros, 18, said he attends Catholic Mass every Sunday in West Wendover and that parishioners there are repeatedly exposed to inflammatory anti-abortion language.

Abortion as much as 24 weeks is protected in Nevada law, and the state legislature recently approved a bill to enshrine the law within the state structure. To develop into law, the measure might want to pass over again during Nevada’s next legislative session, in 2025, and be approved by voters in 2026.

Last yr, following the Dobbs decision, then-Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, issued an executive order much like ones in other states protecting patients who seek abortion care from facing prosecution by states where it is just not legal.

Across Nevada’s eastern border, in Utah, abortion is legal as much as 18 weeks while challenges to a trigger ban and a move to clamp down on abortion clinic licensure proceed through the courts.

Idaho’s laws against abortion are amongst essentially the most restrictive within the country. Currently, the state allows abortion only in certain cases of rape and incest or to save lots of the mother’s life. In April, the state made headlines after lawmakers there passed an “abortion trafficking” law that criminalizes helping minors cross state borders to receive an abortion or obtain abortion pills without parental consent.

Extreme variations in abortion policy from state to state are the brand new normal, and native challenges are “what we’re in for,” said Rachel Rebouché, dean of the Beasley School of Law at Temple University and co-author of a recent research paper examining the post-Dobbs legal reality. “The theaters of conflict are multiplying, and that is the complex legal landscape that we live in.”

Dickson’s strategy in creating what he calls “sanctuary cities for the unborn” involves invoking a 150-year-old federal law that restricts the mailing of abortion pills. But Dickson argues the law goes further, banning any “paraphernalia,” including anything that may very well be used to perform an abortion, reminiscent of certain medical devices and tools.

Federal officials contend that although the abortion provision within the law has not been amended, previous court decisions have limited the reach of the Comstock Act. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion in December concluding that the law doesn’t prohibit the mailing of abortion medication.

Dickson argues that the Comstock Act should supersede any state law or state constitutional protection. Rebouché said she’s unsure how it should shake out within the courts.

“There’s quite a lot of jumps a court would must take, essentially the most significant of which could be that Comstock remains to be good law and it preempts abortion law,” she said. “That is a controversial holding because Comstock has not been enforced or applied for a long time.”

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte declined to comment on whether the organization would proceed to pursue the clinic in West Wendover, citing legal issues.

Dickson’s proposal now sits within the hands of the West Wendover City Council. He assured local leaders that, should they proceed with implementing the ordinance, his attorney will represent them for free of charge. That attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, is a former solicitor general of Texas and is credited with helping shape the law that enables civil lawsuits against people and providers “aiding and abetting” pregnant women terminating a pregnancy.

An anti-abortion ordinance was walked back in at the least one Ohio city, and other local bodies have voted against such ordinances or chosen not to place them to a vote, based on Dickson’s website.

Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, said there’s an irony in Dickson’s multistate effort to stop people from crossing state lines for reproductive health care, including abortion.

“It could be laughable if it weren’t so tragic,” Miller said. “It’s an incredibly cynical, politically motivated effort largely aimed toward sowing confusion and stigmatizing abortion care.”

Miller also pointed to other municipalities within the U.S. — urban centers like Recent York, Seattle, Philadelphia, and more — which have approved local ordinances protecting and expanding access to abortion care.

The West Wendover city manager, mayor, or council members would want to request that consideration of the proposal be added to a gathering agenda for it to maneuver forward. Holm, the mayor, said she wouldn’t include the ordinance for consideration “at any time.” City Council member Gabriela Soriano, the one woman on the council, said in late April that she was unsure whether other council members would pursue the ordinance.

Holm said she was unaware of any outreach to town from Planned Parenthood Mar Monte about moving forward with the clinic.

If the anti-abortion ordinance in West Wendover were instituted and prevented the opening of a clinic in town, it could have far-reaching implications for residents. Currently, they face greater than an hour drive in either direction to the closest hospital.

For some community members, the choice is not so clear-cut.

The Cerros brothers said their mother, who’s Catholic and Hispanic, is against abortion but in support of the Planned Parenthood clinic opening in West Wendover. Years ago, she had a miscarriage after driving an hour and a half to Salt Lake City for emergency care.

“There’s an enormous divide between individuals who think you are killing babies versus individuals who think pregnancy is just not black and white. Things come up,” Fernando Cerros said. “Sometimes you would like emergency care. And a clinic like that will help.”