Sunday, November 26, 2023

The Blue & Grey Has Turned Into Blue & Red

The Blue and Grey of the Civil War has turned into the Blue and Red, the old Confederate states are now Republican and are going back to their racist ways, And instead for fleeing the South because of slavery they are fleeing the South because of the Republican's draconian laws against minorities and women.

America is changing, we are becoming red states or blue states and the people are doing their voting with their feet. The MAGA are moving to red states while everyone else are moving to the blue states. LGBTQ families are moving to safe states, young woman are moving to states that don’t want to control their bodies.
The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now.
As conservative states wage total culture war, college-educated workers—physicians, teachers, professors, and more—are packing their bags.
The New Republic
By Timothy Noah
November 22, 2023


[…]

Another reason was that the state legislature was trying to limit access to contraceptives. In March, the state Senate had voted to require parental consent before a minor could take contraceptives. Kate was chair of the Oklahoma chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and she’d lobbied against this change. (The bill later died in the state House of Representatives.)

“You’re just gonna get my nine-year-old birth control without my knowledge?” one state legislator said to her.

“How does your nine-year-old need birth control?” Kate answered. “And yes, if she needs birth control … what’s worse than her coming home pregnant?”

[…]

Republican-dominated states are pushing out young professionals by enacting extremist conservative policies. Abortion restrictions are the most sweeping example, but state laws restricting everything from academic tenure to transgender health care to the teaching of “divisive concepts” about race are making these states uncongenial to knowledge workers.

The precise effect of all this on the brain drain is hard to tease out from migration statistics because the Dobbs decision is still fairly new, and because red states were bleeding college graduates even before the culture war heated up. The only red state that brings in more college graduates than it sends elsewhere is Texas. But the evidence is everywhere that hard-right social policies in red states are making this dynamic worse.
Suppose you are medical student looking to find a medical school but some of the colleges do not teach anything about abortion nor anything about gender dysphoria, where would you go to school? Colleges that leave gaps in your education or to a college that teaches everything.
The number of applications for OB-GYN residencies is down more than 10 percent in states that have banned abortion since Dobbs. Forty-eight teachers in Hernando County, Florida, fed up with “Don’t Say Gay” and other new laws restricting what they can teach, resigned or retired at the end of the last school year. A North Carolina law confining transgender people to bathrooms in accordance with what it said on their birth certificate was projected, before it was repealed, to cost that state $3.76 billion in business investment, including the loss of a planned global operations center for PayPal in Charlotte. A survey of college faculty in four red states (Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina) about political interference in higher education found a falloff in the number of job candidates for faculty positions, and 67 percent of the respondents said they would not recommend their state to colleagues as a place to work. Indeed, nearly one-third said they were actively considering employment elsewhere.

[…]

The heaviest artillery is trained on abortion rights. After Dobbs, wholesale abortion bans took effect in 14 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. All but Kentucky and Louisiana are trifecta states. In a fifteenth state, Wisconsin, uncertainty about how to interpret an 1849 statute concerning violence against a pregnant woman put abortions on hold for one year until an appeals court ruled that the statute did not apply to abortions.

The students are voting with their feet.


The past few years in U.S. politics have been defined by a series of Supreme Court rulings and unjust laws targeting marginalized groups. From enacting trigger laws after the overturning of Roe v. Wade to encouraging a substantial increase in anti-transgender legislation, conservative lawmakers have forcibly pushed minorities, including women, LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color, to leave conservative states for those that are more liberal, according to Al Jazeera.

Although some might argue that marginalized people can simply vote out the politicians advocating for this legislation, voting hasn’t been the most viable option for these communities, who historically have faced voter suppression. Just last year, Missouri passed a new election law that restricts voter registration drives and requires photo ID at the ballot, which disproportionately hurts Black and Latino citizens, according to The Center for Public Integrity.
History is repeating itself, we saw this exodus before with the Jim Crow laws where Blacks fled the southern states.
The increasing out-migration from conservative states is reminiscent of the Great Migration of the early 1900s in the United States. Racist legislation alongside white supremacist violence pressured millions of Black Americans to leave the sharecropping South for Northern cities in pursuit of educational and economic opportunities, according to The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Although anti-Blackness remained prevalent in the North, the dire conditions Black Americans faced in the South drove many families away.
What I worry about are those who cannot flee, what will happen to them?
But how do we support the marginalized individuals who choose to stay and/or can’t afford to move away? I have often heard people from both sides of the political spectrum tell me and other queer people of color living in the Midwest to simply leave if we’re unhappy. Republican lawmakers have since adopted this rhetoric, including Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who said that people “can move” if they don’t like their state’s abortion laws. While I want to leave Missouri in the future, why should others have to uproot themselves from their communities? What about working-class families who don’t have the resources to move to a different state?
The conservatives don’t have much to worry about they are in the majority and they pick on those who are in the minority.
 
Businesses thinking twice about moving to red states and their ability to hire the best employees, I asked Google's Bard... "Are businesses thinking twice before moving to red states?"
 
Yes, there is some evidence that businesses are thinking twice before moving to red states. A 2022 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 52% of CEOs said they are less likely to expand their business in states that have passed restrictive abortion laws. And a 2023 survey by the National Association of Manufacturers found that 65% of manufacturers said they are concerned about the impact of restrictive abortion laws on their ability to attract and retain talent.

There are a number of reasons why businesses may be hesitant to move to red states. First, businesses are concerned about the impact of restrictive abortion laws on their employees. Many businesses believe that it is important to provide their employees with access to reproductive healthcare, and they are worried that restrictive abortion laws will make it difficult for their employees to get the care they need.

Second, businesses are also concerned about the impact of restrictive abortion laws on their reputation. Many businesses are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace, and they worry that restrictive abortion laws will make it difficult to attract and retain top talent. Additionally, businesses are concerned that being associated with a state that has passed a restrictive abortion law could damage their reputation with customers and investors.

Finally, businesses are also concerned about the potential legal challenges that they may face if they move to a red state. Several states have passed laws that allow private citizens to sue businesses that assist employees in obtaining abortions. Businesses are worried that these laws could lead to costly and time-consuming lawsuits.

As a result of these concerns, some businesses are choosing to stay out of red states altogether. Others are relocating to blue states, where they believe that their employees will have better access to reproductive healthcare and where they will be less likely to face legal challenges.

It is still too early to say what the long-term impact of restrictive abortion laws will be on businesses. However, the evidence suggests that these laws are already having a significant impact on the business community.
This goes even deeper that banning abortions and trans people, it goes to right-wing MAGA taking over and ignoring the Constitution. This goes to rigging elections by gerrymandering, put excesses regulation on IDs for voting, to cutting back on the hours you can vote.



Lastly I asked Google's Bard: Has college enrollment dropped in states banning abortion?
Yes, there is evidence that college enrollment has dropped in states that have banned abortion. A 2022 poll by Intelligent found that 45% of students were considering or planning to transfer to an abortion-friendly state. A 2023 Gallup Poll found that 75% of currently enrolled college students said reproductive health laws in their college's state are at least somewhat important to their decision to stay enrolled. And a 2023 study by the Association of American Medical Colleges found that states banning abortions saw a "steep" 10.5 percent drop in obstetrics and gynecology residency applications in 2023.

These findings suggest that abortion bans are having a negative impact on college enrollment, both for in-state and out-of-state students. This is likely due to a number of factors, including:
  • Concerns about access to abortion care: Students who want to have access to abortion care may be less likely to choose to attend college in a state where abortion is banned.
  • A desire to live in a state with progressive values: Students who value reproductive rights may be less likely to want to live in a state that has banned abortion.
  • Concerns about the overall quality of life in abortion-ban states: Students may be concerned that states that ban abortion are also likely to have other restrictive policies, such as bans on same-sex marriage or comprehensive sex education.
It is important to note that the research on this issue is still ongoing, and more data is needed to fully understand the impact of abortion bans on college enrollment. However, the available evidence suggests that abortion bans are having a negative impact on students' decisions about where to attend college.

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