Texas university no longer promoting self-managed abortion project website 

The University of Texas (UT) at Austin recently took down the website for Project SANA, a research effort focused on “self-managed abortion needs.” The school hasn’t explained why.

Project SANA said it studied “the who, what, and why of self-managed abortion in the United States” and focused on the use of abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol through online telemedicine. The project aimed to understand how people access and use these drugs outside clinical settings, especially in places where abortion is restricted or illegal.

An internet archive shows the website was removed in June, the College Fix reports.

Texas law bans abortions except in medical emergencies. It says a “person may not knowingly perform, induce, or attempt an abortion.”

An unhealthy partnership 

The project gained attention after a 2024 report showed the university received a $6,000 invoice from Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, who runs Aid Access, an organization mailing abortion drugs to women in the U.S., including in states where abortion is illegal.

Documents obtained by Texas Scorecard show Gomperts worked with Project SANA’s leader, Professor Abigail Aiken, who teaches public affairs and health policy at UT Austin and regularly leads classes on reproductive health topics, the report said.

Joe Pojman of Texas Alliance for Life criticized the project as “more of legislative activism than legitimate academic research.”

“We were never fans of Project SANA and are not disappointed to see that it has apparently been dropped by the University of Texas at Austin,” he added.

Dr. Ingrid Skop, a Texas OB-GYN, called the research “dangerous” and “unethical,” saying taxpayers shouldn’t fund studies promoting abortion drugs and indirectly supporting illegal drug distribution networks.

“Programs like these fail to protect the lives of women and unborn babies,” Skop said.

Sue Liebel, state affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, found it “ironic that a state-funded university would finance an organization within its ranks whose stated goal is to undermine the state’s laws.”

“This entity encourages bad actors from outside the state to blatantly break the law by mailing abortion drugs into Texas, misleading pregnant women to take dangerous black-box drugs without a doctor’s supervision to end their babies’ lives,” Liebel said.

“These drugs have brought countless women to the emergency room who are experiencing hemorrhaging, infection and sepsis – some women even losing their lives because of abortion drugs.”