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I'm suprised by the number of replies here that don't get why it's unsafe for girls and women in Texas (and some other US states). I'm also not American, but you had to be living under a rock in the past months and years if you didn't get wind of the overtunring of Roe vs. Wade and the reproductive rights policies in Texas.

I'm glad you said what you said. I am dismayed by the sheer number of transparently bad faith "just asking questions" happening in the comments here.

Techbros would sterotypically enjoy negging and policing female existence, so it's dismaying but not surprising.

> Not moving my family to Texas, Florida, or Alabama, for anything. Beautiful states, but I have a daughter.

Are women not safe in these states? I'm not sure I'm picking up whatever you are implying.

Women die because they're not allowed to abort nonviable fetuses that would also likely kill them. Seems very unsafe, I wouldn't want to be a woman there.

"Abortion in Texas is illegal in all cases, except to save the mother's life, or prevent substantial impairment of major bodily function." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Texas#:~:text=Abor....

The trouble with this language, which seems unambiguous, can be difficult to implement in an emergency situation. For example: https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-sepsis-life-saving-abortion-...

As a partner with a wife who went into septic shock, sepsis is no joke. I was given a 40% chance of her living through the night, which, thankfully she did. Doctors are understandably hesitant to perform an abortion because they could be held criminally liable if some court after the fact, with months of hindsight, may consider that the mother could have lived even if the baby was brought to term. So this is a no-win scenario all around and a terrible law from a party that claims to eschew any government overreach into personal lives.

you may or may not be aware that a common result of such laws is that doctors refuse to get involved in cases where an abortion is necessary to save the mother's life, because they don't want to have to convince a jury of it. better to take a different patient and not risk going to jail until the trial

Nobody knows the letter of the law in the real world and carveouts like this are meant to appease political opposition and get laws passed, not to be enforceable/usable. It's an effective total ban.

For non-Americans everywhere, disallowing abortion including nonviable pregnancies sounds barbaric. America is viewed as the most advanced nation in the world. But these Taliban-level backwardness is mind boggling.

America was never this regressive and tribal when I went to school there in the mid 80's til the 1990.

That is terrible. How often does this situation happen?

Here are some statistics about Termination for Medical Reasons (TFMR): Pregnancies with major congenital fetal abnormalities: Most pregnancies with a major congenital fetal abnormality end in TFMR. The percentage of pregnancies that end in TFMR can range from 70% to 95% depending on the severity of the abnormality. Stillbirth: TFMR is almost twice as common as stillbirth. In 2018, Tommy's statistics reported 2,943 babies lost after being stillborn, while the DHSC reported 3,269 TFMR during that same time period. Down's syndrome: 20% of TFMRs are due to Down's syndrome. Pregnancies with Turner syndrome: Turner syndrome leads to the highest rate of pregnancy termination (100%). Pregnancies with Klinefelter syndrome: Klinefelter syndrome leads to the second highest rate of termination (73.9%). In the UK, over 70% of congenital anomalies are detected during pregnancy and, of those, around 37% will result in TFMR. In Europe, the prevalence rate of TFMR is 4.6 per 1,000 births. Seven percent of women cited health concerns for themselves or possible problems affecting the health of the fetus as their most important reason in 2004, about the same as in 1987.

I don't know the statistics, but even if it happens only once, the authors of the policies in place should be prosecuted.

One stat that jumps out is that infant death rates are way up. Forcing women to complete their term anyway is sadistic and completely unnecessary.

It's hard to tell what you're actually asking but the Louisiana department of health claims it's about 1 in 10,000 die from pregnancy complications [0]. University of California San Francisco claims 6%-8% of pregnancies are high risk [1].

The World Health Organization claims a global rate of 4.3 mother deaths per 1000 live births in low income countries versus 1.2 deaths per 10,000 live births in high income countries [2].

[0] https://ldh.la.gov/page/pregnancy-risks

[1] ucsfhealth.org/conditions/high-risk-pregnancy

[2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mo...

I'm not sure, how many women a year should we say is acceptable?

30-40 seems reasonable.

Also a parent with similar concerns including book bans, systematic weakening of science, education and library institutions, unstable power during temperature extremes (TX), unrestrained gun violence, restrictions on sex ed, and encouraged intolerance of gender differences. To name a few.

Yeah, they are really antagonistic to women, there are strict anti-abortion laws that even include travel bans

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/13/abortion-travel-ban-...

Rural states often are significantly less safe for women, e.g. Texas ranks much higher than the national average, although Alabama and Florida are quite low in this dimension. https://www.statista.com/statistics/232563/forcible-rape-rat...

Alaska: 134 per 100k, The Netherlands: 7.1 per 100k.

Something is very wrong in the USA.

Given Alaska is a 3x outlier compared to the national average, and almost 2x the next highest state, it seems unreasonable to draw conclusions from it alone.

The US: 40 per 100k NL: 7.1 per 100k

I think I'll continue to draw "unreasonable" conclusions.

If you'd wanted to make the stronger case, you could have used those numbers the first time. ;)

I fail to see how you made a valid counter argument though.

There isn't one. You're right. You were just using shock numbers to argue it, when the fair numbers did so better.

Do you have the E.U. as a whole compared the US? If you're going to compare, might as well do apples to apples.

You’re assuming perfect statistics. I wouldn’t.

It's always incredible that "statistics aren't perfect" suddenly doesn't apply when we're talking about the biggest GDP or Military.

They’re likely referring to the effects of the Dobbs ruling [1].

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women%27s_H....

Not limited to having a daughter. My extended family has a trans son. Luckily they are in California. That’s a difficult thing to navigate in itself without living in a state where the fad is to elect the worst people possible.

> All postings for software engineers are on-site, in Texas. Not moving my family to Texas, Florida, or Alabama, for anything. Beautiful states, but I have a daughter.

what does this mean?

That these states are antagonistic to women's health. See: Alabama's ruling that frozen embryos for IVF are actually children with all the rights thereof, immediately ceasing IVF procedures.

This woman in Texas having to sue to avoid a very dangerous birth of a child who will she will end up having to watch die within a few days.

> It states Cox’s OB-GYN, Dr. Damla Karsan, has a “good faith belief” that Cox falls under the legal exception to the abortion ban, but can’t provide the abortion without a court order because she “cannot risk loss of her medical license, life in prison, and massive civil fines” if her belief is not accepted by the courts.

So yes, Texas has an exception for births that would threaten the mother's life, but in practice doctors are justifiably petrified of betting their freedom on their assessment of that risk lining up with a bunch of medically ignorant theocrats' assessments.

Frozen embryos are children with all rights? What's next? Women who have periods are serial killers and must be kept pregnant at all times? Most of those frozen embryos are less than a dozen stem cells. You lose far more skin cells every second.

There is no way to describe this other than religious crankery.

>> Texas has an exception for births that would threaten the mother's life

I saw an interview with a political appointee in charge of exemptions, I believe in texas. He was a hardcore right-wing Christian republican strongly against abortion. He lasted a week. After seeing all the various horror stories, the stuff that obgyns learn of at school, he radically changed his mind and was asking to let doctors again make the decisions: "Please, I don't want to see any more of those ultrasounds."

A source would be great if you can remember that one.

The opinion in the Alabama Supreme Court ruling is a fascinating read, as the justices attempting to figure out what the heck the legislature's intent was in a poorly-written and sparse law.

https://publicportal-api.alappeals.gov/courts/68f021c4-6a44-...

There are some horror stories coming out of certain US states, mostly surrounding woman's reproductive rights. There are crackdowns on old ways of doing things such as driving your daughter to another state in order to have an abortion. That can now be a very serious felony for all involved. Many people with kids, and many young women, are starting to actively avoid moving to these states.

This is growing problem for military recruiters. Try telling a 17yo highschool girl that if she joins the army at 18 she may be posted to some random state where she may not have access to various forms of reproductive healthcare, where perhaps even contraception may soon be disallowed. Or tell a gay kid that he might be moved to a state where the return of sodomy laws is openly discussed in the legislature. Heck no. Even if the new laws are not as bad as reported, they are a significant factor for many young people.

It is chilling that this reads like a dystopian novel prompt.

And on the other side of US men are women, women are men, and nobody is anything and everything at the same time.

What a time to be alive.

Dystopian but also something unique to the US. Each state is effectively a different country with sometimes radically different laws. But people are free to move about and select which set of laws they want to live under, at least so long as they are not pregnant. New parents may move to state A so their daughter can have reproducer freedom. Or a billionaire may move to state B so he can more easily sell stocks without being taxed. No other country organizes itself around such a pick-your-laws scheme.

Switzerland did this even before the US. The US model is basically a copy of how Switzerland has been working (probably even more radically so with a much weaker federal government).

But the emotional policies surrounding abortion in the US do not stem from their federal organization but rather roots in rather strong religious sentiments still more prevalent in the US than probably many other western countries.

In Switzerland abortion has been formally legal since about 2001.

I'd say killing your daughter's child is a lot more horrific than not doing it.

Some of the other commenters hit the nail on the head. The reason is the removal of women's rights previously taken as a given. Also a consideration is the negative view/actions of some police in these states toward anyone who is considered non-standard or non-Christian in any way (e.g., at one point my daughter was close friends with a Muslim African-American).

This is America, so according to the current laws those states have the right to do that. I personally think it's wrong, and would never subject my daughter to that, but my only option is to vote with my money and my feet - so I don't go to conferences in those states, and will never live in those states.

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.” ― Winston S. Churchill

As a parting thought, I admire Nikolai Tesla, and Alan Turing. Tesla was suspected of being a communist and was in love with a pigeon. Turing was homosexual.

How do you think either of these legendary minds would have fared had they been born in and lived in Texas? Would they have survived to do what they did?

What would our world be like today if it had none of their publications or inventions?

Might be about reproductive rights and abortion.

The Earth is a spaceship, and it has an incredible propulsion system: the Galaxy!

I do agree with you though, that it's worth spending some R&D time on exploring outside the spaceship.

There’s similar jobs and companies in blue states too.

This could be the real-life version of Helios one day!

Yeah, it's a bummer that the majority of Space Software jobs are not remote friendly. You have to look really hard to find the ones that are. Some are because you have to actually physically be near the spacecraft to build and debug certain software or firmware but others are just because everyone else is doing that and it's harder for them to manage a small remote contingent.

Still, I hope that this can change in the future, the space industry misses out on a lot of good software talent because of it. Maybe with better visualization technologies like the Apple headset this'll be more possible.

what does your having a daughter have to do with Texas, Florida, or Alabama? Don't you have a daughter wherever you live?

If you are in the US, you must look at the taliban with disdain, for how they are treating women.

As a European, we look at the regimes in the states you mentioned with the same disdain.

No way I would ever consider living there.

Have you ever been to the US? You sound like a provincial who reads too much propaganda.

I visited all states in the western half and it was shocking to see that the infrastructure outside of the cities is more or less comparable with the poorest parts of eastern Europe. It did not change my opinion of the US for the better.

Your comment was about the treatment of women, though, not infrastructure. You probably know that Florida and Alabama are not in the western half of the US. Texas is so big it's often considered its own place, but much of Texas is considered part of the American South in culture and geography. Did you visit Texas? If so, which parts? Much of Europe can fit comfortably within the landmass of Texas, so maybe you just don't have an appreciation of the scale of the U.S. and what that means for politics, infrastructure, culture, etc... Having lived in France, Italy, and the UK for extended periods, I can say that your comments about Europe's superiority don't resonate.

You’re right. While the state of the infrastructure shocked me, it doesn’t say anything about the backwards policies you have in your book burning, women hating states.

I think re: alabama the OP is referring to the recent IVF ruling in the state: https://apnews.com/article/alabama-frozen-embryos-pause-4cf5...

I’m confused about this from an economic standpoint. Assume you could put aside an additional $5k while living in these states, wouldn’t that provide a hedge for the medical needs of your daughter? If needed, you could then travel to a location that provides what you are concerned about. (Not to get hung up on “$5k”, you could substitute any arbitrary number for this cost-benefit judgement)

If move opened the possibility for a lucrative and rewarding career wouldn’t the trade off be worth it?

There was (or still is?) the abortion bounty-hunter law which would allow any private citizen in Texas to sue him if he did what you are proposing. There were also some counties that made it illegal to use their roads to transport someone for the purpose of getting an abortion.

In Texas, there is a clear push to criminalize the act of going out of state to get an abortion.

Seems like laws against crossing state lines for a medical procedure wouldn't withstand a legal challenge because it involves out-of-state commerce. I'm not a lawyer, but that intervention seems to be aggressive and exactly the place courts/congress would step in. Also, in a scenario where it would does hold up, then CA/NY would start doing the same w/gun stuff. And then FL/TX would respond with something else against CA/NY. So... MAD should prevent states from being too aggressive in this area.

Again, my concern is trying to figure out the statistically best way to navigate the various political landscapes and future political possibilities. It just seems too focused on one particular area of risk. I wouldn't categorically close out a good company / good career just because of this risk. This seems like the right place to recommend a hedge.

Having to participate in an ugly, media-circus-y court fight while also going through a medical procedure/emergency does not sound like a fun time. Unless you have a big appetite for drama and hardship, living in a red state is a really bad idea if you have a chance of becoming pregnant, intentionally or unintentionally.

There have been legal challenges against travelling for the procedures we're talking about, there are laws on the books in some of these states that criminalise helping someone to leave the state to receive treatment.

There's a reason why many companies who have offices here have offered relocation to employees so that they don't need to contend with these laws if/when they are enforced upon them.

I'm Dutch, an additional 5k per month would not buy me the feeling of safety I enjoy in the Netherlands. It's not just medical bills. It's also the crime and rape rates. You don't cover death and trauma with insurance.

Oh, yeah, can't help you there. I was thinking you were commenting as a person in a blue state worried about a red state political policy. There's blue vs red and then there's Europe vs US. A whole different order of magnitude. I mean all the same economic freedom vs policy concerns trade-offs still apply; but I'm well aware that there is a massive rift in risk comprehension going in both directions. The US is huge and the stuff you see on the news isn't happening where people with nice salaries live (I mean, statistically never, the news is not statistically accurate).

But I encountered a funny additional problem with that recently when talking to a European transplant which is: you need a car in the US. The US is huge and cheap and safe but you need a car. If you don't have a car you have to live within a subway system. Then it's not cheap/safe (pick one).

The lack of thoughtful urban planning is only a small factor. Yes, you have 30% more traffic related deaths, but check all other quality of living related indices and you can only conclude the US is a not even competing.

As a result, check your position in the happiness index and wonder if you, as a country, maybe fail your citizens. The only index where the US is leading is GDP, and that’s not a big factor in anyone’s life.

You can’t put a price on feeling safe. There are lots of tiktok and yt videos of expats living here who explain just that.

Woah now, its been awhile since I looked but I think we also tend to be in the top 5 countries of number of people incarcerated per capita. If that doesn't spell happiness, I don't know what does.

I'm a citizen in the US, and conversely I wouldn't move to the Netherlands for any amount of money. Everyone values different things differently I suppose.

Let me guess, you're somewhat apathetic and the biggest factor is that you hate to see your taxes go to improving the lives of your fellow citizens.

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