State senator in Missouri trying to ban student research of 72 hour waiting period for abortion

[ck4829]

A state lawmaker wants to stop a graduate student at the University of Missouri from continuing research for her dissertation on the impact of a 72-hour waiting period on women considering abortions.

Missouri state Sen. Kurt Schaefer (R-Columbia) claimed in a letter to the university chancellor dated Oct. 30 that the university is breaking the law by allowing the student to carry out her research. The grad student is studying a recently imposed law requiring women in Missouri to wait 72 hours between the time they seek information about an abortion and the point at which they have the procedure.

It's the latest in an ongoing battle between state lawmakers and the university over its relationship to Planned Parenthood. A decision by the university in September to cancel 10 contracts with Planned Parenthood helped fuel recent protests on campus that led to the ouster of the university system's president and the flagship campus' chancellor.

Schaefer is chairman of the Missouri senate's interim Committee on the Sanctity of Life and a GOP candidate for state attorney general. The state senate began investigating Mizzou's ties to Planned Parenthood this year after an anti-abortion group released heavily edited videos purporting to show that the women's health clinics were selling aborted fetal tissue. No evidence has emerged to prove this assertion; rather, some Planned Parenthood clinics request the reimbursement for the cost of delivering tissue to be used for medical research.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/abortion-study-university-of-missouri_563fab2be4b0411d307168a3

Talk about small government.

[Orrex]

1. Wimmin will be much happier when they shut up and let the mens decide for them.

Surely there's no better use of a state lawmaker's time than fucking with an individual student's academic career.

[RKP5637]

2. Well, it's clear the student just does not know their place!!!

[Turbineguy]

3. They tryin' to steal

our ignorance! Shut that evil place down! Edumacation is the work of Satan!

[DetlefK]

4. Abortion-studies? Bad. Gun-studies? Bad. Marijuana-studies? Bad.

Psst. Don't tell them that scientists have likely found the biochemical process that decides whether you are gay or not. (It's not your DNA. It's chemical markers that accompany your DNA.)

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Interfering with in-process dissertation research approved by all relevant academic committees!

This is Lysenkoism on the right, now.

It's long been the strategy of right wingers to prohibit by statute the scientific studies needed to assess public policy - to literally prohibit the collection and/or publication of that data. These kinds of prohibitions happen across the social field, with the most obvious prohibitions relating to gun violence and reproductive rights. (Even supposedly Democratic gunners support such prohibitions, not shockingly).

But to micro-apply them at the level of an ongoing dissertation project!? My Gawd. A project already approved at several levels of review by qualified academic experts? I suppose some people think you just get up in the morning and start working on your dissertation, on whatever topic you please. Um, no. Nope. No.

This is infuriating.

[blackspade]

7. The GOP banning research?

Who would have thought?

[kwolf68]

8. Pure Fascism

No two ways about it.

[Octafish]

9. What NAZIs??

We don't need no stinking books nor education.

[Eleanors38]

10. Why the GOPer is so deeply in charge in so many states: No opposition. nt