Ernest Hemingway knew his Fascists. He fought against them in 1930s Spain, where Right-wing general Francisco Franco–aided by Adolf Hitler–ultimately overthrew the Spanish Republic in 1939.  

And he fought against them in France after American forces landed in Normandy. He was one of the first Americans to reach Paris and help “liberate” the bar of the Ritz Hotel.

In the 1950s, he opposed the growing plague of anti-Red hysteria as represented by Wisconsin U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.  

Addressing a 1937 Writers Congress in a rare public speech, Hemingway said: “There is only one form of government that cannot produce good writers, and that system is fascism. For fascism is a lie told by bullies. A writer who will not lie cannot live and work under fascism.”  

Ernest Hemingway

It’s thus clear what the Nobel-Prize winning author would think of a Missouri state senator’s efforts at censorship. 

Lindsay Ruhr, a graduate student in the School of Social Work at the University of Missouri, chose to write her doctoral dissertation on the effects of the state’s recently imposed 72-hour waiting period for abortions.  

Lindsay Ruhr

And this has drawn the ire of Missouri State Senator Kurt Schaefer, a Republican from Columbia, Missouri, who chairs the Missouri state senate’s interim Committee on the Sanctity of Life.

In late October, Schaefer sent a letter to the University of Missouri calling Ruhr’s dissertation “a marketing aid for Planned Parenthood — one that is funded, in part or in whole, by taxpayer dollars.”

Kurt Schaefer 

Schaefer demanded that the university hand over documents regarding the project’s approval and said that, because the University of Missouri is a public university, it should not fund research that he said would promote elective abortions.

Missouri law prohibits the use of public funds to promote non-life-saving abortions. 

In September, 2014, Missouri enacted a 72-hour wait for abortions. Reproductive rights advocates believed this is an effort to deny women access to legal abortion as established by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

Other Missouri legal restrictions require women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound scan and receive informational material that aims to persuade them from obtaining an abortion.  

Lindsay Ruhr wants to find out “how this policy [the 72-hour waiting limit] affects women. Whether this policy is having a harmful or beneficial effect, we don’t know.”  

Schaefer claims that Ruhr is biased in favor of abortions because her adviser is affiliated with Planned Parenthood of Kansas. 

“This is a concerning revelation considering the University’s recent troubling connections to Planned Parenthood,” wrote Schaefer in a letter to University of Missouri officials.

Schaefer argued that Ruhr is illegally using public funds to conduct her dissertation 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.”

Under Missouri law, it is illegal for public employees and facilities to use state money towards “encouraging or counseling” a woman to have an abortion not necessary to save her life. 

Even though Ruhr is seeking a PhD at the university, she is employed by Planned Parenthood and the university is not paying for her research. 

Abortions in Missouri aren’t the only scientific subject that Republicans have made it forbidden to study.  Among these: 

• A federal ban on studying gun-related deaths and the results of gun control. This followed aggressive efforts by the National Rifle Association to stop finding data that contradicted its “more guns are better” narrative. It’s prevented crucial research into how best to combat mass shootings and prevent gun accidents in the home.
• Harassment of climate scientists. Republicans have increasingly sought to cut funding to scientists studying the Earth’s climate because they keep finding more data to suggest the planet is actually warming. If the public demands an end to the use of fossil fuels–which are responsible for the warming–this will threaten Republicans’ ties to–and funding from–the oil and gas industries.
• The House Science Committee has demanded climate scientists working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration turn over all emails and documents–personal and professional–they wrote on this subject during the last seven years.

• Preventing scientists from studying Right-wing terrorism in the United States. The foremost expert on this subject–Daryl Johnson, a counter-terrorism analyst working at the Department of Homeland Security–was forced out of his job.
• Johnson had spent six years with the agency amassing a wealth of data on far-Right extremist groups–like the Ku Klux Klan and militia movement–that threaten the safety of American citizens. Republicans’ objection: The facts his research was finding on their constituents made conservatives look bad.

As Harrison E. Salisbury, former New York Times bureau chief in Moscow, observed: “…The message was always the same: Shut up! Don’t rock the boat. Keep those unpleasant truths to yourself. The truth, I was ultimately to learn, is the most dangerous thing.  There are no ends to which men of power will not go to put out its eyes.”