not sure if this has been discussed around here -

I attended a professional meeting in another country last week.

At one point, I was having breakfast with a good friend and colleague who works in another state - a state in which the right to abortion is now sharply limited.

According to my friend, admissions staff at his university are starting to see a real impact on the applicant pool.

It's a large, public research university whose students are drawn primarily from that state, but it's prestigious enough that quite a few students from other states (and from abroad) go there.

They're seeing a sizable number of women from states without limited abortion access withdraw their applications. There's a surprisingly large number of women from in-state doing the same thing, hoping to apply for schools where their reproductive rights aren't under such acute assault.

I sent an email to some administrators at my university. Our state doesn't ban abortion yet, but it almost certainly will in the very near future. And like my friend's institution, ours attracts applicants from out of state - mostly from a neighboring state that isn't going to be banning abortion any time soon.

I don't know if this will be a problem at my university, but I can easily see how it might be.

I've wondered about what laws banning reproductive health care would do for companies that hire highly-educated women from across the country. I also wondered what would happen to our efforts to recruit high-end applicants for faculty openings, though our budget is so tight right now, there aren't many such openings. It didn't occur to me that this would impact the demographics of college admissions - and to my shame, I have to admit that it should have.

Anyone else in academia noticing anything like this?