City leaders moved last week to safeguard their relationship with nonprofit animal services provider Austin Pets Alive!, which is a crucial partner in the city’s efforts to care for stray dogs and cats without resorting to euthanasia.
By a 6-4 vote, City Council added a narrow exception to existing city law that will ensure that APA! is notified when the city-run Austin Animal Center has animals it intends to spay who are lactating and likely pregnant. The notice will give APA! three hours to pick up the animals for placement in their own shelters, which would save the unborn puppies and kittens that would otherwise be aborted in the spay process.
The amendment comes after Council voted on Aug. 13 to overturn a previous rule which required officials at the Austin Animal Center to notify rescue groups like APA! before spaying visibly pregnant animals. CM Krista Laine and other Council members advocated for the change, saying it was needed to streamline operations, save money, and open up space at the Austin Animal Center, which is the largest no-kill shelter in the U.S. but has struggled with overcrowding for years.
APA! fiercely opposed the August rule change, posting on social media that its approval would mean “ending the lives of puppies and kittens who are close to being born.” The group’s president, Dr. Ellen Jefferson, declared that the proposal would not save money and that pet overpopulation is “a myth,” infuriating fellow animal advocates. (She did not say that overcrowding at the city shelter was a myth, but that there are more pet adopters in Austin than animals in the shelters.) She added in remarks to the Statesman that if the rule was adopted, APA!’s partnership with the city would take “10 steps backward.”
This is the threat that last week’s amendment, sponsored by Mayor Kirk Watson, was meant to address. Jefferson thanked Watson for it in comments to Council. She acknowledged that the city’s shelter is overcrowded but soft-pedaled what most others see as a crisis, saying, “We believe that Austin can operate as the premier no-kill city right now with the resources it has.”
Laine, who was instrumental in getting more funding allocated to the shelter in the recent budget negotiations, challenged that idea. She said that 690 animals were born at the Austin Animal Center in recent years and that caring for these additional animals cost the city $270,000 in 2023 alone. “I did not bring this forward out of an attempt to radically reinvent Austin’s relationship with Austin Pets Alive!,” Laine said. “But I do think that in this moment of financial challenge that we are all facing that it is important to be as streamlined and collaborative in coming to solutions as possible.”
After his amendment was approved, Watson lamented the rift that the pet abortion controversy has caused in the community. “This has become untenable,” the mayor said of the anger on both sides. “The vitriol with which people speak to each other is a real problem, and it needs to be addressed.”
[An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Dr. Ellen Jefferson said that “overcrowding at the city’s shelter was ‘a myth.’” In fact, she says that the overpopulation of animals is a myth; that the overcrowding of the city’s shelters is real; and that there are many more pet adopters in Austin than pets in the shelters. The Chronicle regrets the error.]
This article appears in October 3 • 2025.