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Gen Z students say Roe v Wade will determine what state they attend college, some want to leave the US

December 22, 2022 | | Print Article

Members of Generation Z have reportedly been so traumatized by the overturning of Roe v. Wade that many of them are reconsidering their college plans, and some of them are even considering leaving the country altogether.

“Of those planning to enroll in an undergraduate program sometime in the next 12 months, 39% said that the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will affect their decision to attend college in a particular state. That’s according to a BestColleges survey of 1,000 current and prospective undergraduate and graduate students conducted in July,” CNBC reported earlier this week.

“Similarly, 43% of current undergrads said that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has led them to question whether they want to remain in the state where they are attending college or transfer elsewhere,” according to CNBC.

One such member of Gen Z is Lexi McKee-Hemenway, who reportedly grew up trading stories with friends about people they knew who’d wanted an abortion but been denied one.

“McKee-Hemenway recalls once hearing about a pregnant young woman who couldn’t access an abortion and had a horse kick her in the stomach, hoping it would cause a miscarriage. She died from her injuries. Hearing such stories terrified McKee-Hemenway and inspired her to fight for better local access to reproductive health care,” CNBC notes.

The story essentially transformed her into a left-wing activist who’s now the president of the University of South Dakota’s Students for Reproductive Rights club.

The club is so left-wing that it’s practically a pipeline for students seeking to one day work for Planned Parenthood:

Dovetailing back to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it had a particularly acute effect in South Dakota, where a 15-year-old law banning abortions except for emergency situations immediately went into effect.

McKee-Hemenway did not take the overturning well.

“McKee-Hemenway says she’s been approached by several students since the start of the school year asking for help with obtaining an abortion — and with each request, McKee-Hemenway says she becomes ‘a little more convinced’ that she does not want to stay in the U.S. after she graduates from college in 2024,” according to CNBC.

“I want to leave the country. There’s nothing more unnerving than seeing the fear in people’s eyes that they will either lose their job or their parents won’t love them anymore if they get an abortion,” she says. “But that’s the reality of how people think and feel about abortion here,” she said in her own words.

“I have a lot of mixed feelings: rage, fear, disappointment. Most of all, though, I have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that this is the United States now …. It’s a really scary time to live here,” she added.

Is it really, though?

Critics for their part seem very unmoved by her words. In fact, some of them seem eager for McKee-Hemenway and those like her to actually leave:

As noted earlier, McKee-Hemenway isn’t alone in her hyperbole. There’s also Sam Goldstein, a female college student who’s been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2019 but is now planning to switch over to another school just because of Roe v. Wade being overturned.

“I’m a full-blown Wisconsin resident — I pay taxes, I vote here, I work here and I love my school. But the minute Roe was overturned, I felt like I became a second-class citizen overnight …. I cannot stay here,” she said to CNBC.

Then there’s Sydney Burton, who’d dreamed all her life of one day settling down with a creative job in Atlanta, Georgia. Not anymore. She told CNBC that her plans have been “completely derailed” thanks to Roe. v Wade being overturned.

“You could feel everyone’s panic the day Roe was overturned. It made me question everything, like, Do I want to continue to build my life in Georgia? Do I even want to stay in the U.S.?” she said to CNBC.

FYI, abortion is still legal in Georgia. All that’s illegal is obtaining an abortion after a heartbeat has been detected. As noted by critics, this is standard abortion policy in the vast majority of Western nations:

And so unless these Gen Z teens intend to immigrate to the third world, it’s not clear where exactly they’re going to go …

Vivek Saxena
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