Results from the recent report from California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls show that the abortions taking place on college campuses are rising, thanks to California’s initiative to promote abortion pill access to college students.
According to the report, a total of 427 abortions were performed across California’s public and private campuses last year. In 2019, legislation to make this a reality was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom and went into effect in 2023. Senate Bill 24 (SB24) requires that the Commission on the Status of Women and Girls administer “readiness” protocols to efficiently use the College Student Health Center Sexual and Reproductive Health Preparation Fund. The fund “appropriates the monies… to the Commission for allocations to each public university student health care services clinic for specified activities in preparation for providing abortion by medication techniques.”
Some California universities had expressed concerns about providing greater abortion pill access to students, quoting cost and liability. Liability concerns include the risk of unidentified ectopic pregnancy, incomplete abortion, hemorrhaging, and more. All of this takes place on campus, in shared dorms and dorm bathrooms, and transportation may not be readily available to students who experience adverse events.
The initial cost for the initiative was expected to run about $173,000, with the final cost totaling $132,729.15. This cost included creating the infrastructure for documentation, workflow, as well as hiring and training employees to assess and dispense the abortion pills — but does not include the cost of the abortion pills.
It has been noted that there are “memorandums” agreed upon by the California State University Employees Union and the Union of American Physicians and Dentists to allow physicians and other personnel under SB24 to “opt out of providing abortion by medication techniques if declaring a moral, ethical, or religious basis…”
California, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Rhode Island are all planning to sell the abortion pill at Walgreens and CVS. Live Action reported earlier this month that 20 attorneys general issued a letter stating, “Abortion pills are far riskier than surgical abortions, according to established scientific consensus: ‘Medication abortions were 5.96 times as likely to result in a complication as first-trimester aspiration abortion. Abortion pills carry the added risk that when these heightened complications invariably occur, women suffer those harms at home, away from medical help. And finally, mail-order abortion pills also invite the horror of an increase in coerced abortions.’”
“Abortion pill reversal” (APR) — the administration of progesterone in an effort to counteract the progesterone-blocking effects of mifepristone (the abortion pill) — has also recently come under fire by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Advocates for allowing women to access APR say that lives are being saved by it.
