In today’s edition of “Lubbock: The Hub City of Fragile Sensibilities,” Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center has decided that medical education is great and all, but it’s really not worth the hassle of a Facebook notification. The school officially pulled the plug on a talk by Dr. Shelley Sella, an OB-GYN who was set to discuss the ethics and medical realities of late-pregnancy abortions. You know, the kind of stuff a medical student might actually need to know if they ever plan on, say, practicing medicine.
The university’s official stance? It simply wasn’t in their “best interest.” Apparently, the “best interest” of a multi-million dollar research institution is defined by whatever Mark Lee Dickson (a man who is neither a doctor nor a Tech administrator) complains about on social media. Dickson compared a lecture on reproductive health to promoting rape or manufacturing meth, because in the local logic of the South Plains, a classroom discussion is basically a felony if it makes a conservative activist uncomfortable.
The cancellation came after Dickson and the campus chapter of Turning Point USA started “making calls” and stirring the pot. Turning Point was even kind enough to issue a statement saying this definitely wasn’t “an attempt to suppress free speech.” It’s just, you know, a very successful attempt to make sure a specific person isn’t allowed to speak freely on a public campus. Big difference. Huge.
Meanwhile, actual medical experts are pointing out that Texas law, as restrictive as it is, doesn’t actually ban talking about medical procedures. But why let the law or academic freedom get in the way of a good old-fashioned Lubbock caving? If the medical school can’t handle a 31-member student group hosting a guest speaker without hitting the panic button, we can only imagine how they’ll handle a real-life medical emergency.
If Texas Tech is this committed to avoiding controversial topics, should we expect the anatomy department to stop teaching “naughty bits” by next semester?
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/18/texas-tech-health-center-cancel-abortion-talk/