After the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion, a so-called “trigger law” in Texas went into effect, setting off a 30-day countdown to make abortion illegal. Texas hosts some of the country’s most high-profile and largest universities, amongst them the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University, College Station, enrolling 40,000 and 50,000 undergraduate students respectively.
Already, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, abortion has become illegal in the state of Missouri, home of Washington University in St. Louis, recently ranked 14th-best national university by US News and World Report, tied with Brown University and Vanderbilt University. Additionally, women outnumber men at Washington University at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
Washington University is a highly-ranked higher education in Missouri, a state where abortion is now ... [+]
With the Supreme Court’s decision expected to lead to all but total bans on abortion in about half of the states, will this historic overturn influence where female students end up going to college?
“I think there’s a decent chance this actually does impact people’s decision-making about where to go to university,” said Greer Donley, an assistant professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and an expert on reproductive healthcare and the law. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you do start seeing people, especially young women, who are not very keen on going to schools in states where abortion is no longer legal.”
While unintended pregnancies are at an all-time low in the US, they still represent 45 percent of all pregnancies. According to the Brookings Institution, about 40 percent of unplanned pregnancies end in abortion, while the other 60 percent result in a birth, with unintended pregnancies and births most common among young unmarried women, especially teens and the most disadvantaged. While these groups have seen the largest declines in unintended pregnancy rates in recent years, experts see these populations as being most vulnerable after the abolition of Roe v. Wade.
“From an equity standpoint, we should be very concerned about this,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, Founder of the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice in Philadelphia and the author of Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream. “For students whose families don’t have a lot of money, they’re the ones who will be most at risk. They’re the ones who are much more likely to have health and financial issues, and this will derail them from ever completing their degree.”
Indeed, the University of Utah released a statement that, after the Supreme Court ruling, “our health care providers are required to comply … (with) Utah’s ‘trigger law’” and the change in federal and state health care laws will affect university health “colleagues in practical and profound ways. Also, it is likely to disproportionately affect many marginalized members of our community” including low-income and immigrant populations.
In a statement to students, Tulane University described the Supreme Court ruling as “perhaps one of the most consequential and contentious rulings in our lifetime.” Tulane is in Louisiana, where abortions are now banned, except in instances where the mother’s life is at risk or the fetus is “medically futile,” according to the statement. (On Monday, Louisiana’s trigger law banning abortions was temporarily blocked by the state court.)
In a statement to students, Tulane University described the Supreme Court ruling as “perhaps one of ... [+]
As a whole, some higher education experts view safe and legal access to an abortion as potentially playing an increasingly weighty role amongst students in determining where to go to school. However, the fear is that those who could benefit most from a university education will be the ones disproportionately disadvantaged.
“For the people for whom the college-going experience has always been the most tenuous, for people with the least amount of resources or who are at high schools with the least money, this is going to keep those women from going to college,” said Hope Center’s Goldrick-Rab.
