Blocking research, concealing data or not collecting data in the first place is one of the many ways lawmakers can, and have, skewed opinion and policy. Take, for instance, the National Rifle Association’s successful long-term lobbying efforts at keeping certain kinds of research into gun ownership from happening and certain kinds of information from being gathered.
Missouri State Sen. Kurt Schaefer—a candidate for attorney general—obviously thinks it’s a good idea to do the same thing when it comes to his state’s imposition of a medically unnecessary 72-hour waiting period for women seeking abortion. Graduate student Lindsay Ruhr at the University of Missouri is writing her dissertation on the impact of that waiting period, using a survey of the experiences of 200 women at the St. Louis Planned Parenthood facility, which is the state’s only abortion provider. And Schaefer wants to squelch her research.
Of the 27 states with waiting periods, four others besides Missouri set theirs at 72 hours. South Dakota is the worst. There, weekends and state holidays cannot be counted as part of the waiting period. The state has only one abortion clinic—in Sioux Falls, the southeast corner of the state—making what is already a difficult trip for many South Dakota women even tougher and more expensive because of overnight stays or multiple roundtrips. In Missouri, the St. Louis facility is the state’s last remaining abortion clinic.
Schaefer, who chairs the state senate’s interim Committee on the Sanctity of Life sent a letter to the Mizzou chancellor late last month complaining that Ruhr’s study is not objective, unbiased research:
It is difficult to understand how a research study approved by the University, conducted by a University student, and overseen by the Director of the School of Social Work at the University can be perceived as anything but an expenditure of public funds to aid Planned. Parenthood in improving its services to better meet the needs of women seeking abortions in clear violation of Missouri law.
That law prohibits the use of public money to provide or assist in providing abortions to any woman whose life is not threatened by continuing a pregnancy. But Mizzou officials say there is no violation of state law. Spokeswoman Mary Jo Banken pointed out that Ruhr receives no scholarships or grant money from the university. What Schaefer’s meddling really comes down to is an attack on academic freedom.
This isn’t the first run-in the university has had with the legislature over Planned Parenthood. Since the appearance last summer of heavily edited videos purporting—falsely—to show that Planned Parenthood was trafficking in fetal tissue, the university has canceled 10 contracts with the organization. This shuttered a program that gave medical students the chance to do clinical rotations that would let them learn how to provide women with surgical abortions and long-acting contraception methods.
Schaefer’s effort is just one more of the countless attacks to make more difficult, expensive and stigmatized what has been a legal procedure nationwide since 1973. Like the other attacks, this one has as its ultimate aim control over women’s sexuality and a narrowing of their human rights.