AUSTIN — State officials take pride in protecting Texas’ image as a defender of the unborn, but those fights have cost taxpayers $5.6 million to protect a law struck down as unconstitutional and others that have no resolution in sight.

The legal fights over those state laws and administrative directives that have built additional restrictions on abortions and providers have led Texans to spend $3.1 million playing defense. The costs include staff salaries, travel expenses, filing fees and expert witnesses, according to state records released to Hearst Newspapers. In one case, Texas was also ordered to pay abortion providers $2.5 million for its attorneys’ fees.

“I think it’s a backward priority for the state of Texas,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, a group regularly challenging the state’s abortion laws in court. “The politicians are introducing legislation that’s unconstitutional and it’s not a secret. Even some of the people introducing it know it’s unconstitutional.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: Texans paid $500,000 to anti-abortion activists. Here’s what they got.

Anti-abortion advocates say little is more important than protecting the sanctity of life and contend the cost to taxpayers is worth it.

“Elective abortion is a systemic injustice of a larger, stronger party taking the life of a smaller, weaker party. With 50,000 abortions per year in Texas, it is inappropriate to quibble about the state’s return on investment. This is about protecting innocent human life; how much is that worth?” said Kimberlyn Schwartz, spokeswoman for Texas Right to Life, in a text message.

Although the landmark Roe v Wade decision that protected women’s right to abortion was decided nearly 50 years ago, the issue continues to galvanize voters and politicians. In Texas, Republican politicians like Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s top lawyer, have made anti-abortion issues a priority. Lawmakers attempt to pass new regulations on the procedure during every legislative session. Those new laws are often immediately challenged.

In Washington D.C., anti-abortion advocates are hoping to send a case to the U.S. Supreme Court that will unravel the right to an abortion. And President Donald Trump has added two new conservative justices to the court.

Texas suffered its biggest legal, philosophical and financial loss in recent history in 2016 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law that put unconstitutional regulations on abortion facilities. The 2013 law required abortion clinics to resemble ambulatory surgical centers, which required costly renovations at most abortion clinics. The law also required physicians to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital in the event of medical complications, although such complications needing a hospital were rare.

Although the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 against Texas, about half of the state’s abortion clinics were forced to close while the case wound through the legal system. The court ruled neither regulation offered medical benefits that justified the undue burden put on women, who would have to travel further for appointments and face longer wait-times at still-operating clinics. The Texas attorney general’s office and the solicitor general’s office spent at least $840,000 defending this law, according to state records. A federal judge later required Texas to pay abortion providers $2.5 million for attorneys’ fees.

For subscribers: Unconstitutional anti-abortion law costs Texas another $2.5 million

The ruling not only nullified Texas’ law but reverberated across the country. Other states passed mirroring restrictions, dealing a major blow to the anti-abortion movement. While filing a friend of the court brief Tuesday to support a similar Louisiana law to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, Paxton urged the court to revisit and overturn its ruling on the Texas case, calling it a departure from prior abortion precedent.

Two days after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling, state officials quietly published a regulation requiring customary burial or cremation of fetal remains from an abortion recovered by an abortion clinic or a hospital. Abortion providers took Texas to court and won, then returned to court for a second case after the Legislature passed a law in 2017 to codify the administration’s regulation. A district court again rejected the policy. Texas has spent nearly $670,000 defending the policy and is awaiting a ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Texas is also awaiting a ruling from the appeals court on a law that bans a common second-trimester election procedure, known as dilation and evacuation. Critics argue the procedure is gruesome, but a federal judge ruled the ban “intervenes in the medical process of abortion…in an unduly burdensome manner.” Records show Texas has spent nearly $930,000 on that case.

Texas is also in court defending a decision to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood and revoke $3.4 million in funding. State officials based their decision on “sting” videos produced by undercover anti-abortion activists who surreptitiously recorded a Planned Parenthood official who they said was engaged in the illegal sale of body parts. Congressional and state investigations have not supported those claims. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of the state and remanded the case to a federal court in Austin. Texas has spent $705,000 on the case.

Another case challenges a slew of abortion restrictions Texas lawmakers have passed over the years. The case, filed by Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Family Planning, has yet to be heard in court and so farhas cost Texas $9,000.

Texas has a long record of fighting abortion. The landmark Roe v. Wade decision that protected a woman’s right to abortion in 1973 began when a Texas woman sued a district attorney in Dallas County in 1970. Nearly five decades later, abortion still drives political debate in Texas, where a North Texas pastor is convincing small towns to ban the procedure and the use of the morning-after pill, which prevents pregnancy.

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The amount of money the state of Texas has spent to defend the anti-abortion laws is “staggering, though unsurprising,” said Amanda Roberti, a political science professor at Ramapo College of New Jersey who focuses on reproductive policy.

Since 2008, state lawmakers across the country have introduced more than 1,600 bills proposing stricter abortion regulations, she said. “This represents a time that there’s been more activity since Roe v Wade has passed,” she said.

Seven states this year passed bills that would ban abortions after six weeks of gestation or less. A so-called “heartbeat” bill this year failed to gain traction in the Texas Legislature as lawmakers attempted to sideline most social issues in favor of property tax and school funding reform.

andrea.zelinski@chron.com