Opinion
A4
Saturday, March 26, 2022
OUR VIEW
Oregon Trail
becoming a
two-way street
he political leadership in the West needs to
take note of the growing number of farm
families that are picking up stakes and
moving east.
In the 1840s, white settlers from east of the
Mississippi River started making the arduous
journey west, pushing up the Oregon Trail to the
Pacifi c Northwest.
Others followed the trail to Fort Hall in
present-day Idaho, then turned southwest on the
California Trail to reach the gold fi elds of the Sierra
Nevada and the farmland of the Central Valley.
Land was cheap and opportunity was within
relatively easy grasp. The West off ered fewer
restrictions than were in place in the established
eastern communities.
Many longtime farm and ranch families
proudly point to their pioneer heritage.
But over the last decade or so, there’s been
a small but growing number of farm families
picking up stakes and moving east of the coastal
states to escape tough business climates.
It’s a reverse Oregon Trail of sorts, with
modern-day emigrants moving to Idaho, Mon-
tana, the Plains and the Midwest.
While it can hardly be described as a mass
exodus, people are noticing an uptick in the
number of farm operations moving east.
“People have talked about moving for years
and years, but now people are actually doing
it,” said Ryan Jacobsen, manager of the Fresno
County Farm Bureau in California. “Statistically,
it’s still probably a blip on the radar. But it’s crazy
that it’s actually happening.”
Farmers cite several reasons for moving:
seeking less crowded places; political concerns;
COVID protocols; estate taxes, regulations and
associated costs; opportunities for expansion;
“climate migrants” fl eeing drought; and farmers
seeking more secure water supplies.
The common thread is that farmers and
ranchers are moving to places where they believe
their businesses, and families, can better thrive.
The tax and regulatory climate on the West
Coast has made it increasingly diffi cult for family
farming operations.
Carbon policies have made fuel more expen-
sive. COVID regulations have reduced the avail-
ability of labor, and thus have reduced yield while
increasing costs.
State legislatures have grown openly hostile to
agriculture, proposing gross receipt tax schemes
that would turn the already precarious economics
of farming on its head.
They have adopted alternative energy policies
that encourage converting farmland into wind
and solar energy facilities. They’ve proposed
increasing riparian buff ers. They have restricted
common pesticides, herbicides and fumigants.
Most farmers can’t pick up and leave. But, they
can sell out to bigger operations.
Through increased regulation and legislation,
state governments will hasten the consolidation
of the industry and the ruin of the rural commu-
nities that depend on a viable population to thrive.
T
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An issue with few absolutes
ANNE
MORRISON
THINKING OUT LOUD
ast year, Texas passed leg-
islation prohibiting abortion
later than six weeks after
conception, even in cases of rape
and incest. Twice, the United States
Supreme Court has allowed the new
law to remain in eff ect, even though
the legal issues have not yet been
fully presented.
For reference, women typically
have monthly menstrual periods, but
the timing often fl uctuates. If a wom-
an’s period is a week late, it’s not nec-
essarily an indication of anything
unusual. By prohibiting abortion after
six weeks, Texas has eff ectively made
abortion illegal by the time most women
would be realizing that they might be
pregnant — the intent is clearly to pro-
hibit abortion altogether. The Supreme
Court’s decision to allow the Texas
law to remain in eff ect before the legal
issues have been argued indicates that
our country may be on the precipice of a
new social order.
Personally, I have always believed
that life begins at conception, and that a
fetus itself may be sacred and deserving
of protection. I also know that being
able to control whether and when to
have children may be the most basic
decision a woman can make regarding
the direction of her own life. Because
these beliefs can confl ict, abortion has
always been a troubling issue for me. I
decided early on that I would take every
precaution in my life to avoid facing
the issue directly myself — to avoid
becoming pregnant if I wasn’t ready and
willing to raise a child.
When I was 20, I was raped.
The experience was devastating
L
and changed the direction of my life. I
dropped out of school, suddenly uncer-
tain what I wanted to do or study. For
a signifi cant time, I lost all direction in
my life — and drifted. I became very
cautious around men, having learned
that men can represent extreme danger.
The experience triggered a decades-
long struggle with debilitating and
sometimes suicidal depression. So
any law that prohibits abortion — par-
ticularly in cases of rape or incest —
forces me to think about how such a
law would have aff ected me if I had
become pregnant as the result of being
raped. And for me, the consequences
would have been dire.
Becoming pregnant after being
raped could only have compounded
the trauma. If rape at its core is the act
of robbing a woman of the ability to
make the most fundamental decisions
about her own life and body, being
forced to go forward with a preg-
nancy resulting from a rape would
have turned the experience into a
months-long assault, reinfl icting the
same sense of powerlessness by fur-
ther robbing me of any ability to make
fundamental decisions about my own
life and body — with lifelong rami-
fi cations. The pregnancy itself would
not even have been the primary issue
— being forced to go forward unwill-
ingly with a pregnancy, after being
raped unwillingly, would have been
the devastating fact.
An abortion would never have been
an ideal choice for me — whatever deci-
sion I made, I would have been deeply
angry about being forced into a decision
that I had consciously vowed to avoid.
But as depressed and suicidal as I was,
I also know that there is no way that I
would have survived the further trauma
of a forced pregnancy. And as anyone
who is staunchly opposed to abortion
would have to acknowledge, if I would
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not have survived, then neither would
any child.
I recognize that rape and incest rep-
resent the extreme circumstances in any
debate about abortion. But sometimes
extreme examples make issues the most
clear, and legislation like that in Texas
makes clear that there are people who
will never consider the circumstances of
any pregnancy or respect the decisions
of women or girls, not even those who
have been victimized, not even those
facing the most painful and diffi cult
decisions of their lives.
Other people are entitled to their the-
oretical opinions about what a woman
or girl who faces an unwanted preg-
nancy, even one caused by rape or
incest, should do. Other people will
have convictions about the morally cor-
rect decision — clearly the Texas Leg-
islature has expressed its view. I only
know that if I had been forced into a
pregnancy under such circumstances, I
would not have survived.
As someone who is generally pri-
vate, I write about these matters for a
reason. My own experience shows that
the circumstances of pregnancy can
vary widely. We often have no idea of
the issues confronting a woman who
is considering an abortion. Perhaps
the decision of a woman who is facing
such a decision is one which should be
approached less with judgment, and
more with humility and compassion.
The issue of abortion is often pre-
sented as black and white, as two sides
in irreconcilable opposition. But many
people — maybe most — understand
that abortion can involve painful, diffi -
cult and morally ambiguous decisions,
with few absolutes, and with many
shades of gray.
———
Anne Morrison, a La Grande
resident and retired attorney, has lived
in Union County since 2000.
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