Recently, a Johns Hopkins University study of abortions in Texas received a great deal of media attention. The results indicated that the state’s ban on abortions of fetuses beyond the sixth week of pregnancy increased infant mortality by at least 8 percent, and possibly far more, likely by forcing women to carry to term fetuses that were unlikely to survive. In light of this coverage, some Democrats fear that a future Republican administration might curtail research that calls into question support for pro-life and related causes.
Whatever one’s views on abortion, every researcher should agree that in a free society, politics cannot dictate scientific findings. As Alice Dreger details in her 2015 book Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, allowing political authorities, whether medieval Vatican inquisitors or today’s university and government bureaucrats, to determine what questions we ask and what findings we report would wreck science. Unfortunately, in this polarized era, one’s position on whether political or religious interest groups should have the power to censor scientific research depends less on respect for science than on whose ox gets gored.
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