Reproductive health advocates hope to pass a bill in the state Legislature that would require public universities in Massachusetts to offer medication abortions at campus health centers, and they’re turning to social media to build support.
Reproductive Equity Now, formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, launched a $50,000 campaign on Monday to get people to sign an online petition to state legislators. Only one public university, UMass Amherst, openly offers medication abortions at its campus health center, a regimen of two pills that can be prescribed in the first 9 to 11 weeks of pregnancy. Advocates say the bill, first proposed in 2019, would significantly increase access for students who are seeking an abortion and, right now, may have to travel hours to get one.
“The goal of the campaign is not just to get the legislation passed,” said Reproductive Equity Now executive director Rebecca Hart Holder, “but it's also to educate the public about abortion access even here in Massachusetts and to normalize abortion care as part of health care.”
In some areas of the state such as western and southeastern Massachusetts, there are “access deserts for many students,” Hart Holder said. A 2021 study from Smith College found that, on average, a student at UMass Dartmouth would have to travel 62 miles on public transit to obtain a medication abortion in person — a roughly six-hour round trip.
The focus of the ad campaign is on social media, targeting legislators on Beacon Hill, university students and administrators and directing them to sign a petition in support of the legislation.
Emily Fluet, a communication and political science student at Westfield State, is pushing for Massachusetts colleges and universities to make abortion more accessible. She wrote an op-ed in her school newspaper, the Westfield Voice, advocating for the bill’s passage.
“Abortion is health care,” Fluet told GBH News. “And like any other type of health care, you want people to be able to get access to the care they need. Limiting barriers to this kind of access to health care is crucial.”
Fluet works as an intern in the office of Mass. State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, who introduced the bill in the House.
“I am deeply supportive of it because it's one of the ways that we help to expand access within the commonwealth,” Sabadosa said. “We're seeing a lot of rights rolled back at the moment. And this bill would bring Massachusetts in a different direction.”
The state Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Sen. Jason Lewis, is under review by the Committee on Public Health.
Most students’ insurance covers medication abortion, but the bill would also establish a fund that draws on both state and private donations to provide grants to public universities to help pay for it.
Among Massachusetts’ public universities, UMass Amherst is the only school now offering abortion medication in the campus center pharmacies. The Wellness Center at Bridgewater State University told GBH News in a statement that they only offer appointments that could result in prescription for contraception, including emergency contraception like Plan B that is commonly known as the “morning-after pill.”
Hart Holder said the digital campaign comes as the nation faces an unprecedented battle over abortion, with the Supreme Court expected to decide a Mississippi case in June that will most likely dismantle abortion protections embedded in Roe v. Wade. Twenty-six states are poised to outlaw or severely restrict access to abortion care if the 1973 precedent is overturned or gutted.
“It’s hard to know what will happen in the landscape of abortion care access,” Hart Holder said.
