What about unplanned activity? Rape (including date rape), a bad decision (um, college kids possibly alcohol/drugs involved). And even when double up there is potential for birth control failures.
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We are pretty much the same on almost every front, except we are full pay and we left in NYC. We also didnât consider travel cost or health care costs.
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Iâm not going to debate you about it. If something happened, weâll handle it.
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Those darn Californians are a bunch of nut & seed eating tree-huggers. 
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Our family has also ruled out colleges in sparsely populated states like Montana, Wyoming, etc. because of the travel factor, plus the cold factor & a general total lack of interest by Kid 1 or Kid 2 to live in those states for 4 years.
We are also ruling out Idaho and Utah. But doesnât have anything to do with the Roe v Wade decision.
We live in a red state, but no way in heck is our family moving to a blue state just so our kids can go to a college in a blue state because of this topic/issue/decision factor/whatever-you-call-it. Besides, the high school they currently attend is pretty darn great, their friends are great, and it would be super dumb for MY kids for us to uproot them right now.
I totally understand and respect peopleâs decisions for whom it IS a deciding factor, though!
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Absolutely. But the effect is geographic segregation based on oneâs politics. We have already been doing it, but itâs getting worse.
I am seriously curious, why on earth would one not use Plan B in those circumstances? It can be used up to 5 days after intercourse and is at every CVS in the country.
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Right now, Plan B is not banned in any state. But I suspect that might become the next front of the war in some areas⊠There has already been talk in some circles about banning Plan B.
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If you are concerned about crime, there are plenty of other places that have higher violent crime than NYC, such as Miami (similar to San Francisco), Phoenix, Dallas (similar to Los Angeles), Atlanta, Houston (similar to Chicago), Nashville (similar to New Orleans), Cleveland, Memphis, St. Louis.
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So buy plan B now. Plan B pills last for years. Really, I wish there was a federal law protecting abortion rights, but this is not 1965, either, and there is a lot we can do now. Contraceptives have greatly improved efficacy, require less work than ever, and âmorning afterâ pills are readily available to all. A bit of prior planning is a good idea regardless of where one lives.
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For a lot of students/families, getting into and through ANY college is a huge struggle. Many arenât able to do it. For them, I expect reducing the number of colleges to consider based on this issue wonât happen. Expect it will be a total luxury to consider for them (and thus they wonât). Not unlike a lot of the subjects discussed on this site though. Different people with different priorities and options.
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South Carolina just passed a very interesting new bill into law.
Here is the Washington Post article about it
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/22/south-carolina-bill-abortion-websites/
I wonder what else they may do
Majority of those who have unplanned pregnancies are not kids of educated parents on this board. Yes they know everything about double protection and plan B and C. Look up statistics. But those threatened by this change in addition to this group are those whoâs life can be endangered due to no access the medical necessary abortion.
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Actually, much to my surprise, teens are the least likely group to receive abortions. Women in their late twenties, then early twenties, then thirties, receive abortions in greater proportion than teens. We should all support comprehensive sex education and contraceptive management.
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My college kid is gay in a red state. We have another daughter whoâs married to a Hispanic man and their kid is biracial. In both situations, we parents are becoming quietly terrified.
My high school kid has a good dozen colleges on his list that are in anti-abortion states. We are still applying, because we want to see how the midterm elections play out. But the application fee may end up being the only money we feel comfortable sending to entities in those states.
He plans a law career - civil rights/social justice. We go back and forth over whether he would do more good in a red state or whether the balkanization of the country is inevitable and, tbh, safer.
The policies of the anti-abortion states should worry parents of sons just as much as parents of daughters.
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Affordability and ability to get admitted are, for our family, the top 2 factors. I donât give a care what the abortion politics are in whatever the state isâŠif we canât afford it per the Net Price Calculator and if itâs not affordable with a merit scholarship based on my kidâs GPA and test scores, then my kid isnât applying and isnât attending.
I donât care if the school is in Memphis.
Or Dallas.
Or any of the other states that people can list off.
Iâm going to be quiet now and just read instead of reply because anything I say further is going to get somebody upset and that is not my intent at all.
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Exactly.
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Totally agreed. However in best case scenario (taken immediately by a thin woman) they are only 95% effective. The effectiveness decreases substantially in women over 165lb or BMI 25.
There are lots of ways to reduce risk, and I recommend all of them, and when I send my daughter off I will make sure I send her off with as many options as I can. But none are perfect, of course.
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Abortions are highest in the teen group when one looks at percentage of pregnancies that end in abortion, not solely age groups. Fewer teens are sexually active.
Graph from this NYT article about it:
Abortions as a Share of Pregnancies
ETA: The key didnât show up. The purple line is Under 20. Blue is 20-29. Yellow is 40+. Gray is 30-39. Each horizontal line is 10% from the bottom (10%-40% for lines). The x axis is years from 1975-2015.
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Additionally, as @Dadto2NY touched on above, continued access to contraception like Plan B is not guaranteed in all parts of the US. (Or all colleges â see the Catholic universities like Georgetown, for instance.)
Though a bill to protect access to contraception nationwide passed in the House, it is expected to fail in the Senate.
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