Academic Conferences Now Facing Pressure to Avoid Certain States Over Abortion Laws
“You wouldn’t choose a hotel that only has stairs and no elevator because it’s clear that that would be excluding some members”
Consider this a preview. This fall, abortion is going to be a hot topic in higher education.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
To Boycott or Not? Academic Conferences Face Pressure to Avoid Abortion-Hostile States
Corinne Low, an assistant professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, sat down with her colleagues last month to discuss what Low said was the year’s biggest event for economists: the Allied Social Sciences Associations’ annual meeting, hosted by the American Economic Association. But they weren’t talking about presentations or forums or interviews. They were worried about the location.
The 2023 annual meeting was set to take place in New Orleans, where a Louisiana law banning nearly all abortions was about to take effect. The U.S. Supreme Court had just issued its decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, revoking the constitutional right to abortion that had been in place for nearly 50 years.
Many of Low’s colleagues had been pregnant at conferences. One had serious complications that required time in a hospital. They wondered if going to a state with restrictions on abortion would create disincentives for doctors to act to save pregnant women or their future fertility.
“The difference between if a doctor has to say, ‘I have to have a 99-percent chance the patient will die without intervention before I’m allowed to act,’ versus being able to say, ‘In my best medical judgment, the best thing to do is to act here’ — that difference is enormous,” Low said.
So Low and six of her colleagues drafted a letter to the economics association, demanding it relocate its 2023 meeting, and the 2024 meeting planned for San Antonio. They opened the letter to co-signers who vowed not to attend if the annual meeting was held in New Orleans while the abortion ban remained in place. The letter collected more than 1,000 co-signers by July 1.
And the AEA listened, Low said. The organization recommended that all first-round job-market interviews, a large appeal of the conferences, be held online. Now Low and her fellow economists are calling for the AEA conference to become fully hybrid.
“You wouldn’t choose a hotel that only has stairs and no elevator because it’s clear that that would be excluding some members,” Low said. “And you shouldn’t choose a place where certain people are differentially going to be unable to access health care.”
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Comments
Because conformity is much more important than reasoned debate.
Just how long is your conference that you believe access to abortion is going to play a significant role?
“They opened the letter to co-signers who vowed not to attend if the annual meeting was held in New Orleans while the abortion ban remained in place. The letter collected more than 1,000 co-signers by July 1.”
And you KNOW that at least 90% of them are Alec Baldwins who are going to “leave the country if Bush/Trump wins” but have no real intention of it.
Hell, we gun owners can’t even get gun-rights organizations to stop holding conventions in states where their own members can’t carry.*
(LI made the same mistake at its most recent (first?) get-together event a couple years ago, by scheduling it in California.)
*Second Amendment Foundation’s annual convention deliberately alternates years in repressive and permissive states in an attempt to accommodate everybody. I don’t think their reasoning is valid, but at least they think about it.
Elon, please buy LI and give it an edit button!
A lot of states with abortion restrictions have “mental health” exceptions to abortion deadlines, which means they effectively have no restrictions whatsoever on abortions.
As for Texas, they’re lying about the abortion ban there, because their exceptions include “saving the pregnant patient’s life or preventing substantial impairment of major bodily function”. I’m pretty sure “death without intervention” easily qualifies. Gestational diabetes, even though temporary, would arguably qualify under “impairment of major bodily function”.
“Corinne Low, an assistant professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School”
Meanwhile, Corinne Low has no problem living and working in a city and state where feral kids beat old men to death with traffic cones.
https://nypost.com/2022/07/08/laughing-philly-teens-beat-james-lambert-to-death-with-traffic-cone-video/
California already bans travel to 20 states that are insufficiently woke.
https://oag.ca.gov/ab1887
Now add any state that doesn’t allow abortion up to childbirth, and the list will ban over half of the states. Of course, that didn’t keep Hizzoner the Governor from vacationing in Montana.