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Texas is facing lawsuits over some of its abortion laws, including House Bill 2, which restricts access to abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and requires abortion clinics to maintain the same medical facilities as hospitals. The state is also being sued over the Fetal Burial Law, which requires clinics to bury remains from abortions and miscarriages.
To defend these laws, the Texas attorney general has to serve as expert witnesses in federal court. But the state has gotten very little bang for those taxpayer bucks, according to an analysis by The Houston Chronicle鈥檚 .
Matos says it isn鈥檛 abnormal for both sides of the abortion debate to use expert witnesses. But Paxton鈥檚 picks show up consistently in abortion cases, and they are usually marked by vehement anti-abortion views.
鈥淭hey often aren鈥檛 medical doctors,鈥� Matos says. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e ethicists, or lawyers, and they鈥檙e people who have very strong personal views and have voiced them in the public.鈥�
While Matos notes that bias is likely to arise from testimony on both sides, what sets the attorney general鈥檚 experts apart is the testimony they give. Matos says that the anti-abortion experts are offering mostly giving their opinion as testimony, rather than scientific expertise.
鈥淥n seven of the experts we know for sure that they completely disregarded or gave extremely little weight to their testimony,鈥� Matos says. 鈥淭here was one expert, a philosopher, who was talking about the benefits of burying fetal remains, and Judge [Sam] Sparks stopped him in the middle and said, 鈥榣ook, this is a philosopher, this isn鈥檛 going to fly in my court.鈥欌��
This approach has not helped the attorney general, as he defends the state in court. Usually, much of this testimony is not taken into consideration when the case is decided. Matos reached out to the attorney general鈥檚 office and found that his staff is confident in its choices, saying that their experts are highly qualified and that abortion-rights-supporting experts are biased.
Written by Kevin Wheeler.
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