https://wsbt.com/news/health/california-to-require-abortion-medication-at-public-colleges-1
After reading My Fight for Birth Control by Margaret Sanger paired with a class blog post alluding to its themes, I was encouraged to see the above article stating that as of last Friday, California will require abortion medication on 34 public college campuses by 2023. The procedure would be eligible to women less than 10 weeks pregnant, and consists of taking two pills spread across a few days. I think that college students are at an incredibly vulnerable age group, and whilst there is a negative stigma about getting pregnant whilst still enrolled in university, that does not change the fact that this still inevitably happens and is not always planned. It provides college students access to affordable and convenient reproductive health care of their choosing, and ensures they are able to undergo an abortion- an important protected right- if they choose to do so. On the other hand, Maria Jose Fernandez, a legislative advocate for the California Catholic Conference, claims that this law is "trying to limit the alternatives for women" by focusing solely on women wishing to terminate a life and in turn is failing to provide help to those wanting to continue on with their pregnancy. What do you think? Is this law a progressive step to a safer, more fair society in which youthful women will be subject to the reproductive rights they deserve, or is this an all-too-controversial law tilting too heavily towards the "pro-choice" side of a never-ending debate?
This is a fascinating decision that seems to embrace the concept as access to women's health as a human right. While I think it's great that women on college campuses would be given access to knowledge and opportunity for abortion, it seems to me that the act was written with the knowledge that it would be a long road to actually providing these services, given that it has to obtain funding first. I wonder if this was intentional on the part of the lawmakers? Another question to pose -- is it the place of the taxpayer (who funds these institutions) to bear the cost of these abortion medications? Why would this not go through individual insurance plans?
ReplyDeleteI am personally in awe of the measures taken by California to ensure that college students have free access to sexual health services. California also has a program called Family PACT that provides free family planning services to low income individuals. This program completely covers birth control, including IUDs and Plan B, family planning counseling, STI testing, cervical cancer screenings and more. The club that I lead CMC Advocates has stated working with a TotalCare Clinic to provide bi-monthly free STI testing to students. Otherwise testing is $70 at Student Health Services. Every testing date has had a waiting list and this semester already over hundreds of students have been tested. This time of funding and programming by California is truly making a difference and I'm thrilled to hear they expanding these services!
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