Lize Burr, writing in a March 10, 2016 editorial for Burnt Orange Report titled “Why Keep Secrets About Texas Women’s Health?,” has found the poster child for transparency-phobic politicians in State Senator Jane Nelson, chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee and master of ostrich-style sandbox tactics (so it would seem).
The matter in question, as Burr describes it, began over Nelson’s ire directed at a study published by The New England Journal of Medicine. What about a medical study could cause her such distress? Well, this study in particular carries the title “Effect of Removal of Planned Parenthood from the Texas Women’s Health Program,” and its findings can be succinctly summed up by a sad face emoticon. According to the study, It would seem that shuttering up family planning programs across Texas might have created a strange anomaly where, if you can believe it, the women who relied on said programs might be negatively affected by their absence.
Quite a shock… if you’re Senator Nelson. See, the honorable Senator seems upset by what’s missing from the study: a healthy dose of Texas GOP talking points. In particular, the line about how under the new Texas Women’s Health Program there are more providers available than ever before (which, if you remember from our last post, this argument’s validity was completely demolished by State Representative and career health administrator Donna Howard). Nelson is mostly unhappy that anything might be published which would make Planned Parenthood look like a needed service in Texas; bringing up the new Women’s Health Program is just a distracting gimmick to compliment her partisan sniping of NEJM.
Ms. Burr, a former president of the left-leaning Capitol Area Democratic Women, does not just claim that this is a petty partisan issue, but has done the reader a great service by following the trail of Senator Nelson’s ruffled feathers to prove her point. Pressing the question as to whether Senator Nelson used political pressure to force one of the study’s coauthors to suddenly retire (that being Dr. Rick Allgeyer, a now former employee of the Texas Health and Human Service Commission), Burr filed for public information regarding Senator Nelson’s emails concerning the study. Nelson, in response, has sought permission to deny releasing her emails. This has led Burr to confirm, as her blog’s liberal readers might already assume, that obfuscation is simply the name of the game in the debate over women’s healthcare in Texas.
It's sad, really, because these are the same people who talk about Voter ID laws and the need for transparency to "preserve integrity." If only Senator Nelson and her aisle-mates could have come up with a better attempt at smoke and mirrors, then I might have actually bought that line.
