California’s State Senate is considering a bill that would require public colleges in California to provide medication abortions to students who ask for them.
Senate Bill 320, introduced Friday, would not cover surgical abortions, but it would cover an abortion pill that can be taken up to ten weeks after a woman’s last menstrual cycle. The pill would have an effect similar to an early miscarriage, according to Planned Parenthood.
“I think that it’s incredibly important because women of all ages, especially young women, need to make sure they have control over their future – that they have a choice of when they want to incorporate a family into their lives,” said Senator Connie Levya, the Democratic senator who introduced the bill.
The bill was first inspired by a student movement at the University of California, Berkeley called Students United for Reproductive Justice (SURJ), in October 2015. The students leading the movement complained that the process of getting an abortion is too complicated and involves too many “bureaucratic hurdles.”
Adiba Khan, one of those students, said it was annoying that with surgical abortions, women have to tell other people about their decision to kill their unborn. With the pill, getting other people involved would not be necessary.
“You have to do mandatory counseling,” Adiba Khan, one of those students, said. “You basically have to disclose to more people that you want an abortion… It’s so stigmatized.”
Levya said the state bill would make it easier for college students who can’t pay for a surgical fetus removal, and would put pressure on their colleges to “make a hard situation less stressful.”
“I want to make sure women have access to these services — that they have a choice of whether they want to terminate their pregnancy,” Leyva said. “It should happen on campus so they don’t have to travel off campus, which could be a great expense and could make a hard situation more stressful.”
The bill will mandate all state universities to provide the abortion service, placing the financial burden on the California taxpayer.
