A University of Texas program is being lauded by liberals for helping undermine in court the Lone Star State’s safety-focused laws regarding abortion. Given the role the program has played in undermining commonsense laws, it is another example of a tax-funded institution working against the taxpayers.
The Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) is a UT program to study the “impact” of legislation on “reproductive” issues. This entity has yet to find a limitation on abortion or abortion providers it didn’t hate, because it was designed to provide academic cover for tax-funded abortion services.
An agency of state government, UT’s pro-abortion project was funded by left-wing billionaire Warren Buffett. As Bloomberg news service noted in a glowing report last weekend:
High court justices would reference TxPEP’s findings many times in the decision, the most sweeping on abortion in a generation. Supporting briefs relied heavily on TxPEP’s data, and plaintiffs attorneys used the group’s principal investigator, public health researcher Dan Grossman, as an expert witness. That bolstered their winning argument: that the law created outsized burdens for women seeking a constitutionally protected procedure.
The 5-3 Supreme Court decision struck down portions of a 2013 law requiring facilities offering abortions to meet the same medical standards as other surgical clinics and requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at local hospitals.
While such requirements, apparently, are acceptable for broken bones and bleeding skulls, the “right” to an abortion means the procedures can be performed in unsanitary, even dangerous, conditions.
While TxPEP claims to be privately funded, it operates under the auspices of the University of Texas. This gives the pro-abortion advocates running it – one “researcher” formerly headed an abortion services program in Massachusetts – both an easy tax shelter for liberal donors (like Buffett) and legitimizes their findings.
Polling consistently finds that Texans are pro-life. While abortion is popular among white liberals, it is less so among Hispanic voters. In 2014, pro-abortion gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis was defeated in South Texas’ Hispanic-majority counties where a strongly pro-life radio ad was aired repeatedly ahead of the Democratic Party primary.
This is the lasting legacy of the University of Texas: bringing a panache of academic respectability to an industry so intent on killing unborn children they don’t want to be restrained even by basic safety standards.
