Last month, the undergraduate student senate at UC-Berkeley passed a resolution demanding that medication abortion services be provided on-site. Students have also launched a petition.
As to how the medication abortion procedures would be funded, students suggested that university administrators take a pay cut to cover the cost of “investing in students’ health and safety needs.”
Since late March, the graduate student senate has passed a similar resolution, the Daily Californian reported, claiming the university “needs” to provide abortions.
The petition is found in an an op-ed also published by the Daily Californian propagating many pro-choice points. Considering that the authors are directors of Students United for Reproductive Justice at Berkeley, it isn’t surprising.
The op-ed portrays abortion as “a common reproductive health care decision,” and “a simple, safe process that can be done in the woman’s home,” rather than ending the life of one’s unborn child.
The piece decries the length of the medication abortion process as well as counseling designed to make sure a woman is comfortable with this major decision:
The editorial includes such claims as “medical abortions, which have been legal for many years, are available to pregnant women before the 10th week of pregnancy and are not invasive.”
The process described in the op-ed is also referred to as “jump[ing] through insurmountable hurdles to get a legal abortion.” They later consider it being part of “the agony of hacking through a jungle of referrals and bureaucracy that only serve to complicate an already difficult decision,” which may contradict claims about how simple the procedure is.
In conclusion, the editors continue to dismiss their opponents: “Ultimately, abortion is legal in this country and across the state of California. The state’s leading public institutions would be doing their job by making sure this important health service reaches those who need it.” Legalizing medical abortions is also referred to as “not an extraordinarily radical decision.”
That resolutions have been passed and petitions circulated does not mean that the university will adopt such provisions even while supporting abortion, the College Fix noted.
“It’s important to distinguish that the resolution doesn’t mean any action takes place,” Berkeley’s UHS Communications Manager Kim Jarboe wrote in an email to the Fix.
