While Texas law protects unborn children, Texas A&M University and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board have approved funding for research explicitly aimed at “mitigating” the pro-life Dobbs decision under the premise that abortion facility closures harm young women’s education and earnings.
Dr. Daniel Marthey, an assistant professor at the Texas A&M School of Public Health, is leading the research project. On June 12, he presented it to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Education Research Advisory Board.
According to documents obtained through an open records request, Marthey intends to study the relationship between the closure of abortion facilities in Texas and a variety of academic and economic indicators.
Both Texas A&M and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board had previously sought to conceal these records. The Office of the Attorney General recently ordered TAMU to release them.
Marthey states that his effort to “mitigate” the Dobbs decision, which restored authority over abortion policy to state legislatures, stems from a belief that a Texas law passed in 2021 prohibiting abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detectable “will have a negative impact on young women in Texas.”
Marthey’s diagnosis of a “negative impact” is based on a vague declaration that “large literature has shown that increased access to reproductive health services is beneficial for the educational, economic, and health outcomes of young women.” Marthey provides no evidentiary citation to support this claim.
However, a body of research published in 2020 that made similar claims has been widely debunked due to a series of methodological errors.
From this “negative impact” premise, Marthey’s project aims to investigate “how access to reproductive health services and abortion care can affect the educational and labor market trajectories of young women.”
To do so, Marthey will study the impact of House Bill 2, a measure state lawmakers passed in 2013. This law, a previous version of which was the subject of Wendy Davis’ infamous filibuster, imposed a series of health and safety standards on abortion facilities.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately struck down these health and safety standards, but while in effect they led to the closure of dozens of abortion facilities across Texas.
These closures form the crux of Marthey’s research query.
For this research project, Marthey intends to study “[d]e-identified longitudinal data on school performance, test scores, graduation status, college entry, and earnings” from a variety of state agencies. Marthey will then use this data to determine “academic achievement and eventual labor market earnings” for young women in localities where abortion facilities have closed.
A secondary aim of the project is to “examine the degree to which existing school-based services can mitigate the impact of reduced access to abortion services on educational and social outcomes.”
To accomplish these objectives, Marthey intends to “merge the ERC data with abortion facility locations from the Myers Abortion Facilities Database (Myers, 2023), enabling the study team to measure changes in distance from a school to the nearest abortion provider from before to after implementation of Texas HB2.”
Marthey’s examination of the relationship between abortion restrictions and social services reflects an argument commonly made by pro-abortion advocates that efforts in favor of the former must be accompanied by dramatic expansions of the latter.
Once his data collection and analysis is complete, Marthey will then present his findings to “state policymakers.”
Marthey’s “Dissemination Strategy” section calls for the creation of “policy briefs to inform State policymakers and administrators on the potential effects of restricting access to reproductive health services on the academic performance of young people, with a particular focus on policy recommendations.” In addition, Marthey will present his findings to “conferences” and in “journals” devoted to “health economics and public policy.”
The “Financial Resources” section of Marthey’s project outline states that funding will come from “the Department of Health Policy and Management at Texas A&M University and the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.” No further details on the nature or amount of the funding were provided.
Marthey is collaborating on this project with Dr. Marianna Yoder, a professor of public health at Indiana University.
The project is being undertaken in conjunction with the Population Research Center at the University of Maryland, where Marthey concurrently holds a visiting assisting professorship.
On June 25, 2025, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board informed Marthey that his “proposal has been accepted for five years by the Education Research Center (ERC) Advisory Board.” The Education Research Center, housed at UT-Austin, hosts data from a variety of educational entities from pre-K to higher education.
“This anti-human ideological research project at Texas A&M is disturbing,” Texas Right to Life President John Seago told Texas Scorecard. “Our society has such a bias toward killing children that academics think outlawing murder is actually a harm that should be ‘mitigated’. The truth is that when a mother chooses Life, her courage has an amazing ripple effect and positive impact on her, her family, and community.”
“This research is a waste of time and tax dollars, trying to deny something we all see with our own eyes: our culture is better off when people are born, not aborted,” added Seago. “I hope one day our prestigious institutions like Texas A&M will invest more time, effort, and tax-funding in researching the benefits of life-affirming policies and ways we can lift up, not murder, those in need around us.”
Texas A&M University did not reply to a request for comment.
Texas A&M-College Station is a component institution of the Texas A&M University System. The TAMU System is overseen by a board of regents that is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate. Robert Albritton is the current board chairman.
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