© 2024 Texas Public Radio
Real. Reliable. Texas Public Radio.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Dan Patrick Stock Purchase Clashes With His Anti-Abortion Stance

State of Texas

An anti-abortion group in Texas is shocked to learn news that state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor and leading voice in the anti-abortion camp, bought stock in a drug company that manufactures abortion-inducing medication.

Patrick writes that he purchased the stock several years ago through a money manager and wasn’t aware that Teva Pharmaceuticals was the maker of the morning-after pill known as Plan B.

"I want to end abortion," said Patrick just before the start of this summer's special session debate on a set of abortion restrictions that eventually passed. "This bill will end late-term abortion, our sonogram bill is saving lives, but my goal is end abortion. We’re not there yet, but that’s my goal."

One of those restrictions was authored by Patrick that restricted the use and administration of another abortion-inducing pill, RU-486. But Kyleen Wright, the executive director of theTexans for Life Coalition, an anti-abortion group, said those statement are not enough.

"I have to take him at his word that he wants to end abortion , Wright said, "but this is a troubling contradiction and a problem and I think he needs to explain his position and apologize."

Wright said she was shocked when she heard that Patrick once owned such stock.

"It’s just quite a contradiction with his pro-life position," she said. "And I was troubled by it and I was troubled by some of his other comments about it that it was preventive and it’s not abortifacient. And it certainly acts as an abortifacient, it says so in their own material."

Wright said Patrick’s past investment in the Plan-B manufacturer is fighting against his own people in the abortion debate.

Officials with the Texas Ethics Commission report Patrick did not violate any state laws.

Ryan started his radio career in 2002 working for Austin’s News Radio KLBJ-AM as a show producer for the station's organic gardening shows. This slowly evolved into a role as the morning show producer and later as the group’s executive producer.