The Uproar Over a Texas Pathologist Is the Anti-Abortion Movement in a Nutshell

Texas lawmakers essentially forced a state employee to resign because he also worked for Planned Parenthood. It's a microcosm of other attacks we're seeing.

The Uproar Over a Texas Pathologist Is the Anti-Abortion Movement in a Nutshell

There's a lot of news happening, so I'm taking a moment to flag something from last week.

A member of the Texas Medical Board resigned on January 7 because Republican lawmakers made a huge stink of the fact that his day job is working as a pathologist at a Planned Parenthood laboratory. Mere association with the reproductive health provider makes you persona non grata—and that's going to be a recurring theme in 2025.

Dr. Robert Bredt worked as the medical director for TMB's state medical licensing agency since 2012. Since 2011, he has also been the laboratory medical director for Planned Parenthood South Texas in San Antonio. In a statement provided to Lonestar Live Laura Terrill, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Texas, said that the only test currently conducted at the lab is semen analysis, which “is a critical component of our fertility assistance work which is helping Texans start or expand their families.”

Abortion has been banned in Texas since August 2022, so the reproductive healthcare organization hasn't provided abortions for more than two years.

But that didn't stop conservative lawmakers from calling for Bredt's job after they learned about his other employer. State Rep. Briscoe Cain (R) called for Bredt's firing and claimed in a letter that Planned Parenthood violates the Comstock Act (18 USC §§ 1461-1462) by mailing abortion drugs and other “paraphernalia.” Once again, abortion has been banned in Texas for two-plus years, and even when it was legal there, providers were prohibited from prescribing abortion pills by mail.

State Rep. Brian Harrison (R) said in a New Year's Day Twitter post that Bredt is a “literal abortionist"—he's literally not—and that he would pursue legislation to defund the TMB if Bredt was not “removed soon.” Harrison also asked Gov. Greg Abbott to have state agencies ensure no other Planned Parenthood officials are employed, including in advisory roles. On January 2, Harrison added that his staff would call TMB every day and he would post about it daily until Bredt was removed.

By the way, the lawmakers only stumbled upon this information accidentally as part of the board filing a complaint against an anti-vaccine Houston doctor, per the Texas Tribune:

As part of that case, the Texas Medical Board filed a motion asking to introduce Bredt as an expert witness, to testify about the board’s usual practices and procedures. The motion included Bredt’s resumé, which showed his employment at a Planned Parenthood lab.

Terrill of Planned Parenthood South Texas said of the smear campaign: "This latest development is yet another instance of Texas politicians prioritizing political agendas over the health and well-being of people in our state."

And boy, do people opposed to abortion prioritize that agenda over people's well being.

States have kicked Planned Parenthood out of their Medicaid programs because they don't want an organization that performs abortions with its own money to get state funding for providing birth control and cancer screenings to low-income people. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case on this very topic, out of South Carolina, called Kerr v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic. There's also a sham lawsuit out of Texas manufactured by activists that could bankrupt the Planned Parenthood affiliates, and possibly the entire organization.

At the national level, Donald Trump will continue the sick tradition of Republican presidents kicking abortion providers out of a 50-year-old federal family planning program known as Title X. The program was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970 and funds low- and no-cost birth control, pregnancy testing, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment.

Trump will reinstate the domestic "gag rule," so named because it prohibits Title X grantees from counseling patients about abortion or referring them to abortion providers—it prevents them from speaking. During his first term, Trump also imposed additional restrictions that not even George Bush enacted, with Reagan-era rules requiring clinics that wanted to continue offering abortions to maintain physical and financial separation from their Title X services, meaning separate entrances and exam rooms. Planned Parenthood and others left Title X rather than comply with these restrictions, then President Joe Biden undid Trump's rules.

These attacks are all related: Conservatives don't like that abortion continues to exist. Even if no state or federal money pays for said abortions, they are still mad and will take it out on abortion providers in any way possible. (And in the case of Texas—former abortion providers!) But abortion clinics often provide a range of essential health services, meaning they're critical sources of care in a country with an immoral, for-profit health insurance system.

Republicans' vengeance campaign against reproductive health clinics also affects the health and lives of real people, but we know they don't care about that.


Also:

  • For The New Republic, I reported on the conservative legal movement's attacks on the citizenship-granting 14th Amendment. Basically, who gets to be a person?

The Republican plot to further oppress pregnant women, immigrants, and trans kids and their affirming parents has a common nexus: The party is redefining who gets to be a full person under the 14th Amendment. Me in @newrepublic.com:

Susan Rinkunas (@susanrinkunas.com) 2025-01-08T17:20:20.373Z
  • In the face of a potential abortion ballot measure, Idaho lawmakers are trying to pull an Ohio: Make amendments harder to pass.
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