Agreed. I’m one of those people. I’m liberal, but grew up in a very conservative situation. It’s not that I’m afraid of being exposed to other ideas, it’s that I spent much of my life surrounded on all sides by these ideas, so I understand the thinking and the culture intimately. And to my kids (LGBTQ) I know this culture would be toxic. I want for them (and they want for themselves) a life where their rights are not in question. Where they are not merely tolerated, but seen as completely normal. They want a community that wants them just as they are, not in a “hate the sin but love the sinner” way. A place where they can hold hands going down the street and not think twice. A place where they can joyfully thrive.
Rice won’t suffer for applicants. They could fill their class many times over. At most their enrollment will tilt a little more from TX and a little more male, but it won’t much matter. Schools that are tuition dependent and already precarious with applicant numbers are what may suffer. But even then, maybe they will just adjust their mission-admitting more local, low income kids-and explaining the situation to their alums and using it as a fundraising opportunity.
What did change was Ohio’s ability to enforce the laws it passed. Tangentially related, I think legislators will have to be more careful about how they craft their legislation going forward. In the past a state congress could pass a law on strictly ideological terms knowing that it couldn’t be enforced. Now it has gravitas. I don’t think it will cause Ohio to become CA in regards to how it legislates but I do think it might prevent any legislation from being too extreme in either regard. Kansas has proven that. Back to colleges. Oberlin is now in a position of having to attract students, many who come to Oberlin because of the prevailing political views, to a state that at least on this subject has leaned moderately pro life.
I agree the impact will vary tremendously depending on school profile. I will only provide anecdotal evidence on Rice as it’s been heavily discussed. I’m from a purple state where Roe’s decision did not change abortion access. I am heavily involved in a robotics team that sent several girls to Rice over the last few years. We just had our end of year banquet and send off for seniors and applications for next year came up regarding the juniors. No one is applying to Rice and these STEM focused girls are absolutely debating any of the typical draws from red states - particularly Purdue and Georgia Tech where we also have several students now attending and many alumns. If people don’t think STEM kids care about this issue, I can assure you they absolutely do.
I’m perfectly happy to be surrounded by people with different opinions. However when certain people feel they should have the legal right to make personal medical decisions on my behalf - decisions which are not based on science and which endanger my life - I draw the line.
At that point it switches from differing opinions to enforcement of their opinions on me and my bodily autonomy.
Isn’t that what this thread is all about? Prospective students who do not want to give up the right to make their own personal medical decisions, who want to simply be able to follow the advice of their doctor? It’s not that they don’t want to be exposed to other viewpoints, it’s that they don’t want those other viewpoints to forcibly risk their health. Students were perfectly happy to attend college in red states prior to these laws.
We’ll see how it all plays out. Im sure the school would definitely prefer more geographic diversity.
But Texas is their bread and butter. Some people have described Rice as an elite regional university. Technology companies are flocking to Texas and have a solid foothold within the state. This is also why The University of Texas is so strong in CS and engineering.
Also, they are literally right next to the MD Anderson cancer institute - the #1 cancer hospital in the country. If the hospital moves to California or NY, then red flags. Chances of that happening - ZERO.
Rice has the greatest sway in Texas. I doubt those kids wouldve wanted to stay in Texas anyways so their degree wouldn’t carry as much weight vs somewhere else in the country. That’s one of our considerations for our daughter if she likes Rice - would she want to stay in Texas? If not, it goes lower on the list.
If Texas kids start leaving the state, that’s probably a bigger indicator that will impact Rice more - not a few hundred kids from OOS. For every 1580 SAT 4.0 GPA kid that passes on Rice, there will be another one right behind them.
How many of these tech companies are leaving Texas?
That’s a point I hadn’t thought about. There are an increasing number of anecdotes about how Texan hospitals (prior to Dobbs) have a different standard of care for threatened pregnancies than other states. I don’t know the medical landscape in Texas for pregnant women. Do the privileged in metro areas go to a different set of hospitals (like NY!) so that if an abortion needs to happen because mother’s and child’s lives in danger that it does happen quickly without having to wait?
I’m speculating on the types of ob-gyn care the staff of a large center like Anderson get for themselves.
Right, but this was happening before Dobbs. And I have not read of situations where doctors waited to terminate or give medication in major teaching hospitals in major metro areas in Texas. In short, few UMC insured folk in metro areas have not (I think) been subject to the life and fertility threatening delays in the news.
My larger point is that until that happens, I think many would not be deterred from sending their daughters due to RvW impact.
Let’s say for the sake of the argument that students apply to the same colleges as before. Come spring, they have a decision to make, and I would be very surprised if health care access didn’t play a substantial role in their decision.
Come spring, there will also be more horror stories about health emergencies and denied abortions. Will OOS students and their parents not include this as a significant part of their decision process?
Current high school students may be heading to red states and their parents think/hope that it isn’t a big deal, but the Supreme Court decision happened after their decision was made. Would they have made the very same decision in spring had they known? Some? Of course. Majority? Maybe. All of them? I really doubt that.
And if you think about it this way, wouldn’t you try to make sure that your child has at least one good option in a state where abortion is protected? And perhaps one isn’t enough, better a couple more and in different states. Would that mean more applications for colleges in such states?
Our neighborhood sends a large # of students to OOS schools in red and purple states. I don’t see this changing because healthcare standards are patchwork-y in those states. Unless you are telling me that IU hospital in Bloomington would wait to terminate an ectopic pregnancy? For planned abortions, I would say that most families would get their daughter out of state anyway and have it done in NY for non life threatening situations before and after Dobbs.
Anecdotally, kids here go to Indiana, Louisiana, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania (if looking for red-purple states). A few Illinois. Not so much Texas.
I don’t think the only impact is emergency medical care abortions. Medical research and treatment will be impacted in the areas of cancer research, vaccine research, research and treatments for various diseases, infertility treatments, etc… There’s a big can of worms that’s barely been cracked in some of these states.
It is possible that a few red state schools could have an issue with replacing students who chose to go to blue state schools, but there is one factor that I have not seen mentioned that would make a difference. If young men also chose to attend schools based off of state abortion laws in numbers similar to young women, maybe that would have a real impact. My grandfather always believed that the Civil Rights Movement didn’t truly gain traction until “white people up North felt uncomfortable watching Black people down South getting hosed with water and attacked by dogs on TV”. I think that it will take horror stories in the media of women struggling with the most restrictive new abortion laws to bring a groundswell of support from men and change the political discourse.
Yes, obviously post-Roe makes a difference. But does it make a difference to the legislators? I mean, Mississippi’s legislators looked at the will of the voters and shrugged that off; I see nothing to indicate a change in that approach. In fact I see a more radical shift among that group.
Here is an example of how things are being handled at Houston Methodist Hospital, across the street from Rice . . .
Later on, Elizabeth said, she realized that her anger at Methodist was misplaced. “It wasn’t that the Methodist hospital was refusing to perform a service to me simply because they didn’t want to, it was because Texas law … put them in a position to where they were intimidated to not perform this procedure.”
Under Texas law, doctors can be sued by almost anyone for performing an abortion.
I am the former Ohioan who @saillakeerie referenced. I hope I can be allowed a little leeway to rebut.
I have had and do have many dear friends on both sides of the political spectrum. But and maybe naively, thought that the political leaders in the state of my birth would be appalled by the pregnancy of a child who was raped. And were empathetic to her path after she and her parents found out the consequences that she was subjected to after being raped. I thought the politicians of my home state would not publicly state that this child was a fragment of the imagination of the media. And when confronted with the reality of that poor child, they didn’t apologize or admit that they were wrong.
That was what was in my mind when I said I was disappointed in the leaders of the state of my birth.
I really hope that this will not be reported and I would never have wanted to explain myself except that I feel called out.
Sharing or not sharing views is not the same as quality of life problems that can occur when (for example) people call the police on you because they think your apparent racial or ethnic group is inherently criminal (or illegal with respect to immigration), treat you with hostility because you are LGB, prohibit you from activities or using the bathroom because you are T, or (in the context of this thread) pass laws that can criminalize medical providers for some medical actions with no or too-limited exceptions.
In other words, someone may not care what others’ views on abortion are, but care very much if a place makes it illegal for medical providers to perform an abortion even in cases where the fetus is clearly doomed (despite currently having a heartbeat) and/or is a medical threat to the one who is pregnant.
Depends on how constrained the students’ choices are in other respects. Those financially constrained to attend the local community college or in-state public university probably will not choose based on Dobbs effects, because they are too constrained otherwise. Of course, these students, while very numerous, are underrepresented on these forums, while students from “upper middle class” families with parents willing to pay private or out-of-state public prices are much more common here. The latter have much more college choice to begin with, so they can (if they wish) include Dobbs effects in their college selection. But they are a minority of all college students, though certain colleges (e.g. the usual Oberlin example) may be more likely than other colleges to be affected by any such choices.