To assess what America's increasingly radicalized movement against abortion rights is plotting next against America's women, it's generally useful to look to Texas. And what's going on in the Lone Star State right now should be chilling not just to those who support reasonable abortion rights but to anyone who understands that unfettered travel within the U.S. is as fundamental a freedom for Americans as speech or religion.

As The Washington Post reported last week, that freedom of travel is under attack in several Texas communities that have passed or are considering local ordinances that would outlaw use of local roads to aid women in leaving the state to escape its strict abortion ban to obtain abortion services in neighboring states.

To hem them in, in other words. What's next, roadblocks equipped with pregnancy tests?

Anyone who assumes this level of dystopian extremism can't happen here in Missouri hasn't been paying attention. In fact, Missouri lawmakers have already proposed antiabortion enforcement measures that make even Texas' latest trend look mild by comparison. More on that in a moment.

Ordinances already approved in two Texas cities and in two counties, and under consideration in other jurisdiction, make it illegal for anyone to aid a pregnant woman in leaving the state for abortion services by using local roads and highways.

The measure would be enforceable by any private citizen who decided to sue anyone who assists a woman in that way. That unusual enforcement mechanism was pioneered by Texas a few years back as a way to impose laws that, if they were enforced directly by government, would be plainly unconstitutional. Such as restricting individuals' interstate travel.

Finding creative new ways to get around the Constitution — that's where the movement to restrict abortion rights is today.

A chief proponent of the Texas ordinances told The Washington Post that one way it could work is, for example, if a husband wants to prevent his wife from leaving the state for an abortion, he could threaten to sue anyone who offered to drive her.

Here we stress: That assessment isn't from a critic of these laws. It's from a chief proponent, explaining how they are ideally designed to work. Sit with that a moment.

For the almost five decades that Roe v. Wade was in force, its opponents argued that individual states, not a federal court ruling, should determine their own abortion standards. But since the overturn of Roe last year, that stance has given way to one in which lawmakers in some red states are aggressively seeking to extend their own bans on neighboring states in various ways.

Missouri's abortion ban, in effect since the very day Roe fell, is as strict as any in the nation, outlawing the procedure from the moment of conception in every case, including rape and incest, with a sole, vague exception for medical emergencies. Doctors who violate it can face 15 years in prison.

There are no Texas-like travel bans in place here — yet — but Missouri lawmakers have suggested provisions including censorship of billboards, websites and other sources of information for Missouri women regarding out-of-state abortion services.

Other measures filed last year sought to extend Missouri's abortion ban to apply to doctors in other states when Missouri women come seeking help.

That's an unconstitutional absurdity but no more so than Missouri's abortion-ban statute itself, which explicitly states (in plain violation of the constitutional separation of church and state) that "Almighty God is the author of life." Missourians who believe otherwise are apparently free to hit the road. For now, at least.

The takeaway from what Texas is doing, and what Missouri may yet do, should be obvious: Having cast off Roe in part with a state's-rights argument, the antiabortion movement is now determined to cast aside states' rights and impose its will on every region of the country, regardless of whether those regions like it. There is no better argument for a national law codifying the protections that existed under Roe.

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