MO Republicans Demand College Student Destroy Her Abortion Research Or They’ll Defund University [View all]

[KamaAina]

At last, someone's addressing the real problems at Mizzou.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/11/12/mo-republicans-demand-college-student-destroy-her-abortion-research-or-theyll-defund-university/

The University of Missouri may be in the news for some very disturbing reasons, but Republicans aren’t mad about the school’s botched handling of racism; they are outraged that a doctoral student is doing research into how making abortions illegal hurts women.

Missouri state senator Kurt Schaefer was incensed to learn that a UM doctoral student named Lindsay Ruhr was doing her PhD dissertation on the effects of the 72-hour waiting period Republicans lawmakers recently enacted. Worried that her findings would make his anti-abortion stance look bad, and rather than let science dictate policy, Schaefer is attempting to have the university block Ruhr’s research and make it illegal to do any future research that could conceivably show that abortions aren’t unequivocally terrible. (I’m not exaggerating, either. In Missouri, there is a law on the books banning universities from “encouraging” abortions. He wants that to go even further. Research attempting to show abortions are bad, however, are presumably completely fine.)...

Schaefer doesn’t seem equally concerned with his own rampant biases, such as being the chairman of the anti-abortion Committee on the Sanctity of Life.

If scientific research continues to be done to look at the effects of Republican ideological policymaking, Schaefer claims the Republican Party will be forced to pull funding for the public university for violating its agreement not to do research that makes Republicans look bad. Sadly, the University of Missouri has shown signs of caving to Republican pressure in the past. Already this summer the school cancelled several contracts with Planned Parenthood after conservatives grew upset over fraudulent, long-debunked “undercover” Planned Parenthood videos released by a pro-life activist group. Its cowardice in the face of Republican pressure led, in part, to the protests currently engulfing the school.