Roe v. Wade’s demise has dramatically affected the rights of women to control their own bodies. The case has also had rippling effects on the college-selection process for many high school students who consider reproductive freedom a priority.
The landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme court decision in June overturned the long-standing federal guarantee of a woman’s access to abortion and returned control to the hands of the states. This has led to extreme restrictions and sometimes total bans on the medical procedure. In at least 14 states, most abortions are now banned, and the courts in 10 more states are in various stages of considering proposals to ban abortion care. Additional efforts are underway to block access to abortion pills.
Nadia Derrick ’23 explained that the stunning reversal meant she had to reconsider where she could now apply to college and feel safe. “I feel like in general, there are regions of the country where I would have less rights in those areas,” she said. Except for the Northeast, California and the Northwest, “that entire other section of the country has been cut out,” Derrick said.
Charlotte Wyman ’23 added to this sentiment, saying, “I was looking in areas like Nashville and Georgia…And the second the news broke I knew I had to cross them off.”
Sophia Casey ’21 is a second year at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, a state with a total ban on abortion except for life-threatening medical emergencies to the mother. Returning to school in a place that no longer protects the right to an abortion has been jarring, she explained.
“The more I thought about it, the more I became worried for what will come next, and what this Dobbs decision opens the door for down the line. I read the text of the leaked decision and then the actual decision when it was handed down. I was more concerned about what would happen next,” Casey said.
Geography and privilege will play a huge role in a student’s college experience. People without the means to travel to other states that offer abortion care will be harmed the most, Casey commented.
“I was more focused, not so much on how it affected me personally, but more so just understanding that I am sitting in a position of extreme privilege,” she said. “I live in a state where abortion is heavily restricted, but I’m also on the border of Illinois,” she said.
“There’s a Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics within 45 minutes. I go to a pretty liberal university that is working with students to help provide that care and help students get access to that care. Obviously, they can’t provide it in state, but if I were to need that care, my family could fly me home and I could do it in California. So I think my first thoughts were [that] my heart goes out to every other person who lives in Missouri and the people who don’t have the ability to travel out of state.”
Derrick emphasized that the ruling will also disproportionately affect students of color, particularly Black students. “There’s a lot of HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges & Universities) that are more in the South and I was like, I don’t want to go to southern states. I can’t apply to [many] HBCUs or other schools affected by the ban.”
Out of the top 25 HBCUs in the country only five are in states where abortion is currently accessible: University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Howard University in Washington, D.C., Bowie State University and Morgan State University in Maryland and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
States’ restrictive laws have put seemingly liberal leaning universities in tough legal spots. “Wash U has been very clear that both the health center on our campus and the medical school and the whole hospital system will continue to provide birth control and other reproductive services,” Casey explained.
The Dobbs decision has shifted the culture at her university more broadly, Casey added. “It’s a much larger conversation — it comes up a lot more than it used to.”
For example, several professors on Casey’s campus organized a pop-up course that she’s taking this semester called the Politics of Reproduction. Professors from the college, medical school, law school and the school of public policy have teamed up to teach the course. “It’s mostly just to educate about the history of abortion, what it means right now and what it means from a legal perspective, from a health perspective. So it’s definitely a much larger conversation than it was before.”
Mila Fong ’22, an LWHS alum and first year at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, explained that if she was reapplying to schools now she would have to think much harder about her decision. “I would still apply to Tulane, but I definitely would have to take more variables into consideration.” Fong also said that her decision to apply early to Tulane would have changed if applying this year.
Fong also spoke to how Dobbs has affected the culture at Tulane, saying “every single female that I’ve talked to has made the decision to go on birth control with every single person just as a safety measure.” She also mentioned how an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to ban IUDs in Louisiana caused a female peer of hers to consider transferring.
The overturning of Roe hasn’t just made female identifying students think twice about where they apply to college. Haruto Uesugi ’23 said, “this is already a stressful time that’s hard for all of us, and there’s so many variables to take into account.” Uesugi also said that the ruling had made him more aware of the struggles that female identifying students have to take into account.
“This is gonna be something us and grades after us will have to deal with going forward,” Wyman said. “That’s just the reality we’re in.”
