Overturning Roe v. Wade affects school decisions

Rohini Kieffer, Features Editor

When choosing where they want to go to college, high school seniors typically consider academics, campus life, location, cost, and more. This year, many are adding a new factor to the list: abortion access.

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there is no longer a federal right to abortion. Twelve states have now banned it completely and more have put in place an early ban, limiting the number of weeks you can get an abortion. This leaves women attending college in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Wisconsin and eight other states with no access to abortion, not to mention the other four states that have early term abortion bans. According to Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy NGO that focuses on reproductive health, 42% of abortion patients in 2014 were between the ages of 18 and 24, the primary ages for undergraduate college students. 

This not only affects current college students, but also has a major impact on high school students applying to college. A Best Colleges survey that polled 1,000 current and prospective college/university students reported that, “of those planning to enroll in an undergraduate program in the next 12 months, 39% say that the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade will impact their decision to attend college in a particular state.” 

Jackson-Reed seniors have also been rethinking their college selections due to the Supreme Court ruling. One such senior is Radha Tanner. While Tanner has been looking mostly on the East coast, two prominent southern schools on her list were Rice, located in Texas, and UNC Chapel Hill, in North Carolina. When referring to her decision about taking Rice off her list, she mentioned how she doesn’t feel comfortable with the abortion laws in Texas and how “having to live there for four years doesn’t feel safe.” Consequently, her list has now been narrowed down to just the Northeast. 

For Tess Belman, Washington University, in Missouri, was one of her top choices. However, she now expressed that while she still has love for the school, “it’s hard for [her] to imagine going there because Missouri had a trigger law in place and now abortion is banned.” 

She continued by saying “even if it isn’t necessarily a problem for me because I can always travel home, it still is hard for me to imagine living in a place that has laws such as that, and people that support them.” 

Since she has taken Missouri and other US schools off her list, she has now started looking abroad. “It appeals to me to be outside of the US and in another political climate,” she explained.

Belman is not the only senior with the idea of studying abroad. Study.eu, a European study abroad service, noted that there has been a 20% increase in Americans looking at their website to study abroad, (with a 40% jump immediately after the overturn of Roe v. Wade). Overall, Jackson-Reed students seem to be avoiding the south due to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, even if they previously wanted to go to school there. “It would have been nice to live somewhere different from when I’ve lived all my life, but at this point I just can’t take that risk,” concluded Tanner.