United States: The University of California and California State University are working to provide medication abortions on all campuses by January 1, as California’s effort to enshrine abortion access continues.
Till now, none of the Cal State campuses offers medication abortions, and access within the UC system varies from campus to campus. Both the university systems, however, say they are on track to implement a law passed in 2019 requiring their student health centres to provide access to the pills.
As many as 6,228 students could seek medication abortions on UC and Cal State campuses each year once they are available, as per the advancing New Standards in Reproduction Health, which is a research program at the University of California San Francisco.
Making medication abortions available on college campuses would likely free up appointments at clinics throughout the state that could then be sought by people living in the areas nearby where access to abortion is limited or in other states where it is not illegal, multiple reproductive health experts and advocates shared the information to CalMatters.
“Because there is going to be this increase in people coming to California, all of the clinics are going to have, you know, additional demand and kind of struggle with capacity,” Cathren Cohen highlighted, a reproductive rights expert at the UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy. Moreover, “While it’s not necessarily going to help all the people coming from out of state, it’s just generally going to increase the number of abortion providers.”
State Sen. Connie Leyva, who authored Senate Bill 24, mentioned that its significance could not have been anticipated years ago before the recent Supreme Court ruling overturned Roe. V Wade ended the constitutional right to an abortion in the United States of America.
“Little did we know how imperative this bill would be, as well as this law would be based on the decision of Supreme court,” mentioned Leyva, a Chino Democrat. “I think it’s even more important than it was when we did it.”
