MO Republicans Demand College Student Destroy Her Abortion Research Or They’ll Defund University

[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.

[CTyankee]

1. I would get the hell out of MO if I were a student contemplating grad school...

This is unacceptable. And I would hope the state suffers enough to bring the people to their senses and start voting sensibly. I got the hell out of TX back in the 60s to go to school in the NE and I never regretted it. Best decision of my life, IMO...

[Hekate]

5. 25 years ago I hired a young woman who had left what she & her husband called "the State of Miz'ry"

They were young, ambitious, and came from dysfunctional families in a dysfunctional society. They got the hell out to Southern California.

It's not just minorities who can't stand it there: this young couple was white.

Sometimes getting out is all you can do.

[riversedge]

2. my god!! Repulicans demanding that Grad students shut down their research based

on ideology. I really don't want to believe this. When is this going to stop? Who will stop them?

[loyalsister]

6. This particular republican represents the distirct which houses the university

He got elected and re-elected by promising and bringing home the bacon. Then he started threatening to withhold funding leading to Loftin's fatal decision to revoke university hospital privileges required for the only abortion provider in the area to practice out of Planned Parenthood.

I suspect he has been trying to distance himself from the people's republic of Columbia (as some state legislators love to refer to us) now that he's running statewide.

[tishaLA]

3. Let them defund, then. If they think the problems at Mizzou are bad now...

taking away state money will make everything much worse. And it will blow up in their smug little faces

[flygal]

4. How are they succeeding in taking us back a century?

G Damn fundies and gun nuts voting these jerks in office. I'm sick of protesting this stuff!!