(Kiran Komanduri via Washington Square News)
Dolton; Illinois — Amid the repeal of Roe v. Wade, college students are having to consider things they never had to before.
That includes Lucy Rath, a 22-year-old junior at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. While abortion remains legal in Pennsylvania, a 1982 law, the Abortion Control Act, is now in effect again because of Roe’s reversal. The law requires conseling, a 24-hour waiting period and limits abortion government funding, according to Yahoo Life.
Underneath these limitations, Rath is uncertain what her plan would be if she needed access to care, which worries her and her parents.
“I know that they worry about … how difficult it would be to access care since myself and many of my peers do not have access to reliable transportation — the nearest Planned Parenthood is 30 minutes from F&M — [or] family nearby or the ability to miss multiple days of school to receive this care if needed,” she said.
In Michigan, and throughout the Midwest, the future of abortion care has yet to be determined. The state’s Supreme Court has put the question of whether or not to place abortion rights in the state consitution to a Nov. 8 ballot vote.
Jess D’Agostino, 21, a senior at University of Michigan, said the ruling came as positive news.
“I think this does not indicate that this issue is at all moot,” she said. “However, I am very thankful there is still time and room to debate and work on the fight for abortion rights in Michigan.”
Indiana was the first state to have lawmakers sign a near-total abortion ban after the Roe decision. Though a judge recently blocked the enforcement of the ban, Matisse Laufgraben, sophomore at Indiana University, was immediately terrified of it.
“It’s so difficult to put into words the way I felt when I found out Roe v. Wade had been overturned,” she says. “I have never felt so small and so powerless. More than anything, I was terrified of the fact that millions of people with the capacity to become pregnant were probably feeling the exact same way I was feeling.”
Laufgraben, director of sexual well-being for the university’s Culture of Care, believes the state ban will create a stigma around the hook-up culture on campus.
“I do expect these laws to increase fear and shame, especially for the people who have the capacity to become pregnant,” she said. “It is put all onto the person who could obtain pregnancy to resist sex and be ashamed of their sexual nature.”
Carrington Blair, a junior at Jackson State University, had a friend who found out she was pregnant after the Roe decision. The restrictions in Mississippi will heavily impact her friend’s decision-making.
“Now [my friend] has to decipher whether she wants to keep [the pregnancy] or not ... She didn’t tell her mom or dad, but she called the doctors and the clinics, and they are actually telling her on the phone, ‘We do not carry those procedures anymore, we can’t help you,’” she said.
Michelle Udalor started her freshman year at Texas Tech, in a state that has some of the strictest abortion restrictions in the country. As a Houston native, she felt she wouldn’t be accepted at the school, which has conservative leanings.
“In Houston, I could easily tell people my beliefs on Roe v. Wade, because a lot of people have the same belief as me,” she said. “But here it’s a little bit harder to do that, and you have to be a little bit more hush-hush about it.”