A state senator is again saying the University of Missouri is violating a state law barring tax dollars from supporting abortion.
Senator Kurt Schaefer
This time, says Senator Kurt Schaefer (R-Columbia), it’s by conducting a study of why some women, under Missouri’s 72-hour waiting period for abortions, are signing a form consenting to an abortion but then not coming back to have one.
“The information that’s in the University’s own documents that we’ve already seen on this study, which is says is the purpose of the study is to help Planned Parenthood better deliver services to women seeking an abortion,” said Schaefer. “Well, we have a state law that says, specifically, that state employees, state funding, and state institutions cannot using public resources or use their public position to facility, coerce, or otherwise support abortion. Yet clearly that’s the stated purpose of the study.”
Schaefer also says the study is biased because the graduate student conducting it is in the school of social work, the director of which sits on the Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri Board of Directors.
“If you had a professor that was on the board of a private corporation, for example, and then use their position at the University to conduct a study to better help the corporation that they’re on the board of in marketing or for any other purpose that would aid that corporation, you’d never allow that. It’s biased, it violates multiple rules of integrity in academic research, yet that’s what’s happening in this study.”
Planned Parenthood accuses Schaefer of grandstanding in this and other issues he’s raised regarding Planned Parenthood and the University of Missouri.
“We call on Chancellor [R. Bowen] Loftin to remain stalwart in the face of political interference with academic freedom. Over 2,500 students and community members spoke out earlier this week in support of contracts and physician privileges between MU and Planned Parenthood; the Chancellor should heed those voices and act in the interest of students and his community, not politicians advancing their careers at MU’s expense,” wrote President and CEO Laura McQuade.
Schaefer dismisses Planned Parenthood’s criticisms as coming from a “group of pro-abortion activists trying to get Missouri tax dollars to pay for their agenda when we have state laws that say that it is illegal for tax dollars to go to that purpose.”
