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Don’t Abandon People in Red States
Let’s build an Overground Railroad instead
I overhead a couple of high school students this morning talking about their college options.
“I don’t think I’m going to apply to Grinnel, anymore,” one said.
“Or Rice,” the other chimed in. “Screw them.”
They were looking at the map of US states that are either implementing or likely to implement bans on abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade. The kids were eliminating schools within imperiled states from their lists of college application candidates.
Other folks I know are looking into moving from red states to blue states, or out of the United States altogether. As one writer friend put it, “I was thinking to go to Canada when Trump won, but didn’t want to lose hope. Now, I can’t see raising my daughter here.”
I get it. It feels like America is moving backwards. Where we used to lead the world in granting human rights, we are now the sole outlier among developed nations denying a national right to an abortion. Let’s not even get into our unique and ever-worsening denial of national healthcare, or our inability to deny weapons to those who shouldn’t be carrying them.
I’m not so sure retreat is the answer —…
