How scientific conferences are responding to abortion bans and anti-LGBTQ+ laws | Science

When Claire Kouba heard that the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU’s) annual meeting would be held in New Orleans in 2025, she was worried. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion, Louisiana had banned the procedure with few exceptions. Kouba—a hydrogeologist at the University of California, Davis, and an AGU member since 2011—had attended the 2022 meeting in Chicago while early in her first pregnancy and may be trying to grow her family again in 2025. As she contemplated traveling to Louisiana, she found herself fearing for her own safety and that of other attendees who might need emergency medical care for complications such as miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, and septic uterus.

Other professional organizations are also planning conferences in states that have enacted restrictive abortion laws, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, or measures seen as racially discriminatory, raising similar concerns. Some have relocated their meetings: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists moved its May meeting this year, from Louisiana to Maryland, after members worried they could be arrested for describing their work, and the American Association of Immunologists relocated its 2024 meeting from Arizona to Illinois, issuing a statement decrying the “dramatic and deleterious impact” the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision was having on patients.

But they are exceptions, according to a Science survey of U.S. conferences across STEM disciplines. Of the 15 organizations that responded, 10 currently have meetings planned in states with restrictive abortion policies or anti-LGBTQ+ legislation; none is relocating. Four cited the steep financial costs associated with pulling out of existing contracts typically negotiated years in advance. But at least two-thirds of the organizations are taking other measures to address members’ concerns. Among them: new guidelines for choosing future meeting venues and safety measures to protect vulnerable groups. Organizers and attendees alike have also expressed hope that the hybrid and virtual offerings popularized during COVID-19, which can increase participation and diversity, will remain an option.

AGU is among those not relocating, though Kouba asked leaders to do so in an open letter that garnered more than 800 signatories. The letter pointed out that AGU had shifted to a virtual platform during COVID-19 and said the health risks to pregnant people warrant similar consideration. “AGU members can gain significant professional benefits through in-person conference attendance, but pregnant AGU members should not face disproportionate medical risks to do so,” Kouba says.

The letter spurred much activity and conversation within the organization, including a roundtable to discuss the Dobbs decision and a member survey. Lauren Parr, AGU’s senior vice president of meetings and learning, says the experience brought home how “the current climate in the United States” was challenging AGU’s goal of making meetings feel safe and welcoming. In preparation for the New Orleans meeting, Parr has been in touch with medical professionals at local hospitals, who have guaranteed “safe and equitable health care” for attendees.

Other societies have taken their own steps. The American Chemical Society (ACS), which held a meeting in Indiana in March, asked speakers in one session to dedicate a few minutes of their talk to issues related to diversity after the state banned all forms of gender-affirming care for minors. And the American Anthropological Association (AAA) responded after NAACP released a travel advisory for Missouri, citing “looming danger” for Black people there following the passage of a law making it more difficult to sue businesses over racial discrimination, among other concerns. AAA, which has a meeting scheduled in Missouri in 2026, began conversations with the state’s NAACP chapter, city and county officials, and the Convention and Visitors Bureau. (A similar advisory has since been released for Florida, where AAA also has a future meeting.)

For Kouba, AGU’s response has been gratifying, though she says she’s likely to remain home. Some botanists will soon face the same decision: Next month, Botany 2023—a joint meeting for six plant science societies—is to be held in Idaho, which has some of the most extreme antiabortion laws in the country. On 30 March, the planning committee released a statement noting that breaking the contract would be “fiscally irresponsible and financially devastating for most—if not all—our partnering societies.” The meeting will have a virtual component, and the location is a deal breaker for some. University of Oregon botanist Hilary Rose Dawson, a queer woman, wrote on Twitter that although she appreciated the conference’s statement, “I still feel unsafe attending.”

Some societies have decided to plan future meetings in states where attendees will feel safer. Before the Dobbs ruling, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) made plans to hold this year’s meeting in Texas and its 2025 meeting in Georgia. Both states have passed laws that limit or ban abortion, criminalize gender-affirming care for minors, and tamp down discussion of race in schools. This year’s meeting went forward as planned in January, with a virtual component, and the society is not pulling out of Georgia for 2025. But in planning the society’s 2026 gathering, executives surveyed members and held member forums to discuss anti-LGBTQ+ policies. The feedback led SICB to limit the states for consideration. “We drew a line at the notion that our members could be arrested at a meeting we were having,” says society president Patricia Hernandez, referring to laws that ban providing gender-affirming care, as some potential attendees do for dependents.

But ruling out certain locations can have downsides, others say. Any location—even one in a seemingly “safe” state—will have drawbacks, Parr says, and excluding certain states risks alienating large swaths of an organization’s membership. Pulling out of a planned venue can also damage relationships with the local community, which may rely on the tourism dollars and jobs that conferences bring, Parr points out. “Instead, can we potentially use our voice for good while we’re there? Can we be more inclusive? Can we make sure that we’re hiring minority-owned businesses to participate with us?”

Others agree it can be a mistake to retreat. “We need to make sure not to let people who are currently living under the harshest circumstances feel abandoned,” says Daniel Muratore, an oceanographer at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico who co-authored a preprint about building queer- and trans-inclusive conferences. Co-author Rachel Gregor, a marine microbiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says discussions about swapping venues were among the most “spirited and nuanced” she and her colleagues had, but many agreed that blanket bans can be problematic.

Amanda Morris, a chemist at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University who touched on legislation targeting transgender people in Indiana during her presentation at the ACS conference there, acknowledges that in the fast-changing U.S. political environment, the challenges facing conference organizers might have been hard to predict. But now, she says, “I do expect them to show up for members and support them.”