Texas Medical Board director retires after uproar over his Planned Parenthood employment

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The medical director of the Texas Medical Board has retired, less than two weeks after conservative lawmakers publicized his employment with a Planned Parenthood laboratory.

Dr. Robert Bredt has worked as medical director for the state medical licensing agency since 2012, earning $185,000 a year. While the members of the licensing board are appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, the medical director role is hired by agency leadership.

According to his resumé, Bredt also worked at Planned Parenthood South Texas Laboratory since 2011, as well as Genics Laboratory in Las Vegas and San Antonio since 2022. Bredt, 62, is also a professor, consultant and laboratory inspector.

Bredt submitted his retirement paperwork on Tuesday, which was also his last day of work, a medical board spokesperson said in an email. Bredt declined to comment.

This kerfuffle began not with a debate about reproductive health care, but rather, another highly politicized fight about COVID treatments. The Texas Medical Board has been locked in an ongoing legal battle with Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a Houston ear, nose and throat doctor, about her anti-vaccine stances and use of ivermectin to treat COVID. In 2023, the board filed an official complaint against Bowden, alleging she violated the standard of care, failed to maintain patient-doctor confidentiality and acted unprofessionally by treating a COVID patient without examining them

After she refused to settle, Bowden ended up before an administrative law judge through the State Office of Administrative Hearings. 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.

State Rep. Brian Harrison, a conservative Republican from Midlothian and frequent critic of the medical board, said he made the decision to go public with this information “within minutes” after he learned about it.

“There's some real irony here in that in their zeal to prosecute a doctor, they had to make public that the medical director … is literally also a Planned Parenthood employee,” Harrison told The Texas Tribune on Wednesday.

He posted Bredt’s resumé on X and sent Abbott a letter demanding Bredt’s termination. He said he would file legislation to defund the medical board, and his office would call the agency every day until Bredt was fired.

“This fox must be removed from the guardianship of the henhouse,” he wrote to Abbott.

Harrison also said Abbott should direct all state agencies to ensure none of their employees work for Planned Parenthood. While there is no law or regulation prohibiting a state employee from also working at Planned Parenthood, the reproductive health care organization has long been enemy number one of Texas conservatives. The state sacrificed millions of federal dollars to keep Planned Parenthood providers out of the Medicaid program, leading dozens of family planning clinics to close in the process, and is currently trying to bankrupt Planned Parenthood with a $1.8 billion lawsuit.

Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas no longer provide abortions, but that has done little to reduce conservatives’ vitriol towards the health care provider. In a letter sent to members of the Texas Medical Board just before the end of the year, calling for Bredt’s termination, state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican from Deer Park, called Planned Parenthood “a criminal enterprise that profits off of killing babies.”

In a statement, Planned Parenthood South Texas CEO Laura Terrill accused politicians of wasting “valuable time and resources playing doctor in an act of political theatre.”

“Dr. Bredt’s work at Planned Parenthood South Texas (PPST) reflects his unwavering commitment to providing the highest standards of medical care,” she wrote in a statement. “Planned Parenthoods in Texas follow the law, full stop. We have, and always will, comply with state and federal regulations while focusing on what truly matters: delivering essential health care services to the tens of thousands of Texans who depend on us every day.”

Harrison said Wednesday that he is pleased Bredt no longer works for the state, but is outraged that he was hired in the first place. He wants an investigation into the medical board, and the executive branch’s hiring practices, and said he may still push a bill to defund the board itself.

This is not the first time Harrison has led a charge to force a state entity to bow to his vision of conservative values. Last year, he claimed credit for Texas A&M getting rid of its LGBTQ studies minor, although the university said he played no role, and forced the Texas Workforce Commission to remove a line on its website saying it would investigate claims of discrimination based on gender identity.

Disclosure: Planned Parenthood has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.