The Supreme Court’s move to overturn Roe v. Wade will limit university students’ access to abortion services as schools must accord with increasingly restrictive state laws on reproductive rights.

While many American colleges and universities seek to ensure their reproductive healthcare and welcome out-of-state students to benefit from their services, a growing proportion of students will be unable to obtain abortions through campus services, as it is now illegal or will soon be illegal in 16 states.

Students “will likely receive more support, health services, and more funding in states that are concerned about the decision issued on Friday, and students in red states may very well experience total bans and increasing restrictions,” a constitutional law scholar, Cary Franklin, predicts. “College students, college professors, people relocating for jobs — anyone thinking about moving across state lines will now have to take this into account, especially if they’re capable of becoming pregnant.”

Students’ college experiences will be increasingly shaped by the reproductive laws of the states in which they study following the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. With higher fertility levels and less reliable access to consistent and comprehensive health insurance that includes contraceptives, members of this younger cohort are at greater risk of unplanned pregnancy.

Additionally, “the first semester is the most dangerous time for sexual assault for undergraduate students,” an authority on reproductive health and sexual violence, Dabney Evans, said. College women aged 18-24 are at three times greater risk of sexual violence than women in general, with one in four undergraduate females experiencing rape or sexual assault on campus, according to data from an anti-sexual violence organization, Rainn. 

A comprehensive package of health services should therefore include “access to contraception to be able to prevent an unintended pregnancy and emergency contraception so that if one does have a condom fail or is sexually assaulted, they can prevent pregnancy before it happens, and then access to abortion,” Ms. Evans argued. Yet the abortion controls passing through state legislatures include few exceptions for rape and incest, and questions abound about access to contraceptives.  

The Roe court protected individual decision-making related to “marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, and child rearing and education” through a string of precedents “founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty.” In the Dobbs decision, Justice Samuel Alito claimed that giving states discretion on abortion will not affect access to contraception to prevent unintended pregnancy. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” he wrote. 

However, this assurance has been widely criticized as uncompelling, as matters of reproductive rights do not have a deep historical basis and for some raise moral questions similar to those raised about abortion. 

“I think we will see more colleges and potentially even more states through their public colleges trying to increase reproductive services and reproductive healthcare for their students,” Ms. Franklin said. Whether universities’ healthcare benefits will include abortion services following the overturning of Roe v. Wade will depend on local policy. 

Princeton University has affirmed that, given current New Jersey law, Dobbs will not change its ability to distribute contraceptives and emergency contraceptives on campus and subsisdize local abortion resources for employees and students. Under pending legislation in Georgia, schools such as Emory University would be permitted to provide reproductive health care only to community members. That legislation would reduce the time in which an abortion is allowed up to six weeks of pregnancy from 22 weeks. 

Laws limiting students’ abortion access are now more widespread, but they are not new. In the past several years, some states enacted Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers laws, which make it difficult for universities to create appropriate clinical settings to provide abortions by requiring the same ambulatory setups as hospitals and doctors need to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

“Legislators started advancing state-level policies like that because if clinics could not meet those requirements, then they would have to shut down,” the director of Maternal, Child, Reproductive and Sexual Health specialization at the CUNY School of Public Health, Diana Romero, said.

Students from states with abortion restrictions might instead seek abortions in the states where they study if laws there are more lenient. However, “students are in a vulnerable position if they attend school in, come from, or their parents or guardians still reside in states that are trying to criminalize or enact civil penalties that extend across state lines,” Ms. Franklin said.

“States might attempt to outlaw traveling across state lines to receive an abortion and criminalize aiders and abettors, providers, and potentially even pregnant people who obtain abortions themselves,” she added.

Ms. Romero noted the logistical and financial burdens of such a trend: “The challenge is going to be getting an appointment if there’s going to be a huge influx of people from out of state also vying for limited appointments.”

A Texas law already allows private citizens to sue anyone helping women recieve out-of-state abortions, such as in the form of providing financial assistance, driving patients to clinics, or offering women religious counsel on abortion, with the incentive to earn a $10,000 cash reward if successful. In response, universities in California are preparing to be havens for students from states where abortion is restricted, mirroring legislation signed by Governor Newsom to ensure abortion access for residents and nonresidents. California is also considering a law to protect aiders and abettors of abortion from receiving civil penalties imposed by other states. 

It is unclear whether California’s protections for abortion would trump the Texas law. “The Supreme Court might have the votes for finding that people have a right to travel, and trying to bar them from leaving states to obtain healthcare might be unconstitutional,” Ms. Franklin said. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concurring in Dobbs, argued that such laws would violate the constitutional right to interstate travel.

The high court interrogated the vast state variations on the legality of abortion resulting from Roe. “On what ground could the constitutional status of a fetus depend on the pregnant woman’s location?” Justice Alito wrote. “Can it be that a fetus that is viable in a big city in the United States has a privileged moral status not enjoyed by an identical fetus in a remote area?” 

These questions, though posed to argue that Roe’s central rule on fetus viability could not be applied uniformly, echo the mounting concerns of those seeking and providing abortions across the country. “I think we are going to have a major battle between the states on these questions,” Ms. Franklin said.