Red States Put Themselves at Risk

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

There have been a couple of related stories in the news in recent days. One deals with medicine and the other commerce, and both basically predict that red states in America, and particularly those which have banned access to abortion, are going to suffer unintended repercussions for their political maneuverings to deny healthcare choices to women and to criminalize medical care provided by licensed physicians. 

Yahoo News reported on a couple of medical recruiting agencies that are already having difficulty finding physicians willing to relocate to states where stringent anti-abortion laws have recently been enacted - particularly physicians specializing in ob-gyn care, but also in other specialties as well.  Not only that, but medical students are looking for other states in which to do their residency training, and other medical students who had intended to practice medicine in their home states have also begun looking at other states in which they could set up their practices.  Retention of doctors who are already practicing also appears to be a looming problem in some states where abortion has been banned.

The Indiana legislature enacted an abortion ban this week and the state's governor quickly signed the legislation, perhaps hoping that a hurried completion of the process would limit time for a backlash.  But pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly found the time to issue a reaction anyway.  Lilly, which is headquartered in Indianapolis - and has been for over 140 years, says that it is going to start spending more of its revenues outside of Indiana.  As the company begins focusing beyond the borders of its home state, funding for production and innovation will follow, and so will the highly skilled and trained employees necessary to fill the jobs that have expanded into other locations - including international sites.   It will be a net brain drain and economic drain for Indiana, and likely for the United States as well.

Other corporations are also likely to find it difficult to attract young, dynamic, educated individuals to fill jobs in what many see as educational and cultural backwaters - places where politicians and sanctimonious moral arbiters seek to control an ever-expanding list of public services from healthcare to library offerings to which aspects of history may - or may not - be taught in schools.

As the doctors and members of the highly skilled labor force go elsewhere, the counter-balance to a restrictive society is lessened and things get worse.  It's a vicious cycle, one that was set in motion by one segment of society trying to impose its morals on everyone else, and in the end it harms the health and prosperity of the people it had intended to serve.

It's one thing to deliberately slow social and economic progress, but it is quite another to shift the whole process into reverse.   Judges and legislators are not only tinkering with our long-established rights, they are also threatening the very survival of our nation.

It is time for voters to come to the rescue - like they did in Kansas!