Teresa DePiñeres:
It’s not only the disproportion to abortion care and contraception care, but contraceptive care, that is a burden, but it’s actually the access to childcare to save housing, to food, to, to secure food. This is what you would actually need in order to raise a child in an environment that was safe. And when that is not available, then actually there’s not much of a choice. So in terms of like, and then on top of it, then you add the burden of not having, being able to access abortion care or contraceptive services. If you choose to that just increases the burden from somebody who’s already burdened unfortunately from the moment that they were born.

Heather Shea:
Welcome to Student Affairs NOW. The online learning community for student affairs educators. I am your host, Heather Shea. Well before the leaked SCOTUS document was available. People who work within campus based women’s centers, health clinics, and sexual assault programs have been worrying about the repercussions of restrictions on abortion access on college and university campuses. In today’s episode, I talk with two subject matter experts, an OBGYN based in California and a lawyer and women’s studies professor at Smith College in Massachusetts about how we can better support reproductive health equity on college and university campuses post row. Before I introduce my guest today, I’m gonna share more about our podcast and today’s sponsors Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you will find these conversations, making a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find us at studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Today’s episode is sponsored by LeaderShape, go to leadershape.org, to learn how they can work with you to create a just caring and thriving world. This episode is also sponsored by Vector Solutions, formerly EverFi, the trusted partner for 2000 plus colleges and universities. Vector Solutions is the standard of care for student safety, wellbeing and inclusion. Stay tuned to the end of the podcast for more information about each of these sponsors.

Heather Shea:
As I mentioned, I’m your host, Heather Shea, my pronouns are she, her and hers, and I am broadcasting from the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the three fires, Confederacy of Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi peoples also home to the campus of Michigan State University, where I work and Michigan State University resides on land seated in the 1819 treaty of Saginaw. Welcome to my two panelists today, Dr. Teresa DePiñeres and Dr. Carrie Baker. I am so thrilled that both of you could be here with me today. Let’s do some quick introductions, so you can tell the audience a little bit more about you, your name, role institution, et cetera. And I’m going to start with you Dr. Teresa DePiñeres.

Teresa DePiñeres:
My name is Dr. Teresa DePiñeres. I am my pronouns are she her and ella? I’m a first generation black Columbian obstetrician and gynecologist. I have specialty training in complex abortion and contraception. I am also a coach, a mentor, a teacher, a leader, and an activist I’ve been working on reproductive health rights and policy, both domestically and globally. My specialty is translating the evidence into the reality deeply rooted in reproductive justice and my current job which applies to this panel is I work at essential access health as a lead clinician for the medication abortion access project, which is implementing abortion services, medication, abortion services training for 31, California university student health centers. Thanks for having me.

Heather Shea:
Thank you so much for being here. I’m grateful for your time and Dr. Carrie Baker. Welcome.

Carrie N. Baker:
Yeah. Great. Thanks so much. It’s wonderful to be here. My name is Carrie Baker and I’m a professor in the program for the study of women and gender at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. And I’m also a lawyer and my scholarship very much focuses on social movements and social change, including reproductive rights law and, and, and feminist activism to change the law and make it better. I’m a writer for Ms. Magazine and Icover one of my beats is reproductive rights. And so I interview a lot of doctors across the country, as well as policy makers and lawyers and activists about what they’re doing on the ground on this issue. And in addition, I serve on the board of planned parenthood advocacy fund of Massachusetts, and I’m the former president of the abortion rights of Western Massachusetts.

Heather Shea:
Wonderful. I am thrilled. This is going to be a fabulous conversation today. I’m so grateful to both of you for joining me. I want to start with you Dr. DePiñeres, if you could talk a little bit more about your organization and the resources that you’re providing for California colleges and universities.

Teresa DePiñeres:
Okay. So at the medication abortion access project, we’re currently providing training and technical assistance to 31 state funded universities student health centers in California. This is in compliance with SB 24, which was passed in 2019, which requires medication abortion to be available to students. Through the student health centers, trainings include things like, clarification exercise for folks and which is, and the overview of the laws and regulations pertinent to medication abortion, which has been changing dramatically. During this pandemic medication, abortion is something that can be done safely in person via telehealth and by the pregnant person themselves. We’re currently empowering student health centers to be on the forefront of abortion access in California.

Heather Shea:
So I am in Michigan and as we kind of talk during our prep we have a very old antiquated trigger law on the books. It’s currently not in effect. But we are thinking about what resources might we be able to provide to students. So what about out-of-state students? Can they, can they access some of the work that you all are engaging in?

Teresa DePiñeres:
So if an, if a person lives out of state, but they’re attending the university, then they can access this care. The care is going to be very specific to university students. And that doesn’t, that doesn’t preclude where they’re living in terms of just specifically around the student health centers, but that is a large swath of people. There’s, there’s there’s folks that come in from other states that are that that come to the university of California in like California state university system.

Heather Shea:
Great. So let’s, let’s back up a moment for those folks who are coming to this conversation new, or haven’t been watching the news in the last couple of weeks, unaware of the historical you know, landscape in which we’re finding ourselves. Can Carrie, can you talk, talk to us a, a bit about the landscape, the historical overview, the movement to expand these conversations and, and particularly over the last century, we’ll do this in like, you know, three minutes, which it could be like a three hour lecture I’m sure. Give us a broad overview.

Carrie N. Baker:
Yeah. So in the United States abortion traditionally was legal before quickening quickening is the point at which the pregnant person feels fetal movement, which is usually around four to five months, depending on whether it’s a first or later pregnancy and in the mid 19th century, because of a lot of complicated reasons, which I won’t get into many states, banned abortion. They created criminal abortion laws in the 1850s, 1860s. And it wasn’t until the mid 20th century in the 1950s and sixties that doctors and lawyers and feminist advocates began to push for the legalization of abortion. And there were, you know, laws like California and New York began to pass laws, legalizing abortion, but then a case got to the Supreme court called Roe vs Wade, which is a very famous case. You’ve probably heard of it. And what the court said in that case was that people have a fundamental right to privacy.

Carrie N. Baker:
And that right to privacy includes the right to make the decision as to whether to have an abortion or not in consultation with their doctors. And so that Supreme court decision in 1973 knocked down a lot of these criminal abortion bans across the country. And to some degree opened up access to abortion. I say to some degree, because very quickly what happened is Congress passed what was called the height amendment, which banned Medicaid from covering abortion, which meant that low income people, which, you know, disproportionately are women of color, did not have access to abortion because often low income people relied on Medicaid for healthcare. And so really, you know, there was this two tiered access. If you could afford it, you could probably get it. You may have to drive a long way, but you could probably get it if you couldn’t afford it.

Carrie N. Baker:
Then what as what happened was that these abortion funds developed, which were private organizations, which raised money to help people access abortion, but obviously was not ideal. And, and there were still a lot of barriers, particularly for young people, low income people and, and who were disproportionately people of color. And so, you know, that’s what we had for many years until January, excuse me, June 24th, just a couple weeks ago on a Friday, the Supreme court overturned Roe versus Wade. And now it’s, it’s been thrown back to the states and many states had laws, either preexisting Roe, like what you have in Michigan or trigger bans, which were laws passed to say, as soon as Roe is overturned, we’re going to ban abortion. So now I don’t know what the latest count is, but over 10 states have banned abortion. We have this patchwork depending on where you live as to what the law is. And it means that again and disproportionately people that don’t have access to fly or drive out of state to get the care that they need are experiencing more and more barriers. So we’re really in a crisis point in our country at this point. And a lot of people no longer have access to abortion healthcare.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. And part of the reason why I really wanted to bring this conversation to Student Affairs Now and to our audience today was because of the ways that this affects college students in particular. And when we think about access to abortion as a student success issue you wrote about this a little bit, how I found you actually was through an article and diverse issues in higher ed where you kind of linked access to safe abortion is going to keep more students in school. Can you, can you expand about that a little bit?

Carrie N. Baker:
Yeah, absolutely. And so this is based on research. I did here in Massachusetts, none of the public university campuses in Massachusetts and probably very, very few private offer abortion pills on campus. And so that forces students off campus to find care. And because abortion care is often limited it’s it’s abortion clinics, planned parenthood clinics, or independent clinics that are offering this care. It means that students have to travel off campus to get the care. And many students don’t have cars, they rely on public transportation. So there’s a lot of barriers. And the people that are way disproportionately impacted are low income people that don’t have cars that don’t have ways to get to care. And, and so I did some, you know, for this research that I was doing, and I looked at, you know previous research, the American association of community colleges and the national association of education statistics did research, showing that student access to abortion healthcare can enhance continued college participation and educational equity for students.

Carrie N. Baker:
One of the major reasons students give for dropping out of college often is that they have children. They need to attend to, or they couldn’t access abortion healthcare, or for that matter contraception. And they end up having to carry to term unwanted pregnancies, and then they have to drop out of school because they have to go and work. And so, and then of course we all know the statistics around sexual assault of college students. And so if students experience sexual assault and then they can’t access abortion healthcare or previously, they didn’t have access to contraception care again, that could be another barrier. And those barriers fall in particular on people who can get pregnant, which are disproportionately cisgender women or transgender men or non-binary people and disproportionately those barriers impact, low income students who are disproportionately students of color. So in my research, I frame this as a gender equity issue as an economic justice issue and as a racial justice issue, if we’re not providing comprehensive access to reproductive healthcare, including contraception, abortion, healthcare, then the people disproportionately burdened, by the way, we’ve set up this care are going to be low income students female students and students of color.

Heather Shea:
Dr. DePiñeres, any reactions or thoughts on, on what Dr. Baker just shared?

Teresa DePiñeres:
Well, it’s a lot, I guess I would just add that there is, you know, it’s not only the disproportion to abortion care and contraception care, but contraceptive care, that is a burden, but it’s actually the access to childcare to save housing, to food, to, to secure food. This is what you would actually need in order to raise a child in an environment that was safe. And when that is not available, then actually there’s not much of a choice. So in terms of like, and then on top of it, then you add the burden of not having, being able to access abortion care or contraceptive services. If you choose to that just increases the burden from somebody who’s already burdened unfortunately from the moment that they were born.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

Carrie N. Baker:
Go ahead. Many educational institutions, quite frankly, are not complying with their title IX burden responsibility to provide childcare on campus, to provide support, to not discriminate against pregnant people and parenting people. And actually the department of education just issued proposed guidelines that specifically address discrimination against pregnant and parenting people. And I think schools really need to pay attention to that and expand the kinds of support so that students can choose to carry pregnancies to term and continue their educations.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. And one of the articles I read and I can’t remember which which publication it was in is that many schools. I mean, and part of it is just the way that higher education in the United States is set up is kind of this like right after high school experience, that they are not equipped to address the needs of students who have children on campus. And you’re right. It is a title IX issue. And I was happy to see that expanded definition in the, in the proposed regulations. So I know that’s one of the other questions I have is like, what does it look like if you’re in a state where abortion is banned and then how are we then supporting students who want to pursue continuing education

Teresa DePiñeres:
Who want to pursue continuing that is actually, that’s a whole other, that’s a whole other podcast,

Heather Shea:
Whole other episode. Yeah.

Teresa DePiñeres:
That was really a whole other podcast because I, because I think honestly, this is, has, is not just exclusive to higher education. This is a systematic thing. You know, we saw with the pandemic that people do not value parenting and caring for children. It’s been mostly on the burden of women to basically raise families in during the pandemic when schools were not available. And so this is a systemic thing of not being able, not supporting, supporting families in any way, shape or form, as we know a lot of folks who have abortions are already parents. So we’re actually do all, any legislation is really act, is really actually going against families. And so the idea that these regulations, somehow our pro-life is like ridiculous because all it is really doing is going against people trying to like take care of themselves and their, and their families.

Heather Shea:
Yeah, yeah. Those levels have, we’ve definitely outgrown them. I’m sure. Yeah.

Carrie N. Baker:
Yeah. Yeah. And I would just add that the state spanning abortion are the states with the least support for maternal healthcare and childcare and support for children free and reduced lunches. I mean, it’s, you know, Mississippi, which brought the Dobbs case where the court just overturned Roe, they have one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the nation. So, you know, it, it is a very, they’re actually in the world. Right, right. Good point. Right. Right. Exactly. And so the same people that are opposing access to reproductive healthcare are also opposing access to maternal healthcare and to childcare and support for parenting people who are parenting. So it’s, it’s, you know, it’s a sad situation.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. So I mean, since, since the last couple of weeks have gone by, you know, a lot has changed, obviously I think that that’s the kind of the crux of this conversation. And as that landscape has so drastically and dramatically changed you know, from each of our vantage points, we have somebody from the west coast, somebody on the east coast, I’m in the Midwest. Certainly we’re seeing a whole bunch of action happening. And when we talk about the pandemic, like our campus is pivoted very quickly in response to changing state regulations, like are our campuses actually equipped to change quickly. And I am really interested in just in general, what responses you all have witnessed in the communities around you? Dr. DePiñeres, let’s start with you.

Teresa DePiñeres:
Yeah. well we’re like in California that we have a law in our state constitution to protect abortion and contraception. And so additionally, we’re lucky that state funds covers abortion care as well. And, and there’s also laws that allow advanced practice clinicians who midwives P physicians assistants and and nurse practitioners to provide. And they actually tend to provide they’re the major providers of healthcare on student health in student campus, healthcare centers. however, California’s still a big state. So there’s still a lack of access in with more rural areas. But luckily telehealth has been an option in California, which is not necessarily in the case in other states. So having telehealth is really important and bolstering all the things around telehealth is actually including the payment reimbursement around telehealth is super important. In California, there are currently many bills either in progress or finish related to securing the right to abortion in California, specifically, including enacting legal protections for providers, protecting people from criminalization of abortion or pregnancy loss, including self-managed abortion repealing parental consent for abortion services that might still be in the books and enhancing some privacy protections for medical records.

Teresa DePiñeres:
All of these hopefully will move forward to help to allow for folks who are coming from the outside also to benefit from this care. However, we do know that getting to California and being in California is not a, not a small small venture. So but that’s where the, probably the access the funds abortion funds can come in handy.

Heather Shea:
Right, right. Dr. Baker, where, what are you seeing in your communities in, Massachusetts, in terms of the response in terms of activism, in terms of engagement legal protection.

Carrie N. Baker:
Yeah. It’s been, yeah, it’s been huge. You know, we passed the Roe act in December of 2020 guaranteeing and affirmative right to abortion. But with what’s happened with Dobbs and the overturning of Roe, there’s been a whole new range of legislation to protect providers here in Massachusetts, who are providing care to people from out of the state. And that means both people driving in from other states are coming from other states, but also you know, trying to protect people from like kind of suits, you know, the Texas bounty hunter suits or providers here that might want to provide telemedicine abortion to people in other states by defining telemedicine is occurring in the location where the provider is located, so that a, a Massachusetts physician could provide telemedicine to a Texas patient and, and be protected by Massachusetts laws. That’s again, in process.

Carrie N. Baker:
But that’s what we’re working for. There’s also been work around trying to pass a law similar to the law that passed in California to require public universities, to offer telemedicine abortion, or excuse me, to offer medication abortion on campus. And to try to also get private schools. So students here at Smith college are trying to get the health center on campus to do that. They also are working around trying to get like a vending machine with plan B and more access and information to affordable plan B at all, you know, all hours of the night trying to raise awareness around crisis pregnancy centers, because what happens is if you are not offering abortion on campus, students go and Google for abortion. And when they Google for abortion services, often at the top of the Google search is a bunch of paid ads from these anti-abortion fake clinics, right?

Carrie N. Baker:
These crisis pregnancy centers. And it’s very easy to be deceived by for, by them. They look like abortion clinics. I interviewed a young woman who was at a college outside of Boston, a pre-health student who knew about crisis pregnancy centers. And she got completely deceived. She drove to this crisis pregnancy center, and then they immediately started piling on all this. You’re a mother and don’t kill your baby kind of language. And so we need to really raise awareness of, of people about these CPCs and, and protect people from them and give them good, solid, real medical information, because there’s a lot of attempt to try to deceive people and lie to them and misrepresent abortion. You know, these CPC say abortion is dangerous. It’s not. And so there’s a lot of organizing around that and trying to just raise people’s awareness.

Heather Shea:
So when you think I’m going to stay with you for just a moment when you think about people like me, who work on college and university campuses and student affairs have direct contact with students what kind of advice would you give us to support undergraduate students who might, may find themselves with an unplanned pregnancy? And I’d love to hear kind of like, what would you say, what would you say? Yeah, college and university, student affairs folks should be thinking about.

Carrie N. Baker:
So if you’re living in a state where abortion is legal, that’s, it’s going to be very different than if you’re living in one of these states that is now banned abortion. But if you’re living in a state where abortion is legal, I think that campuses need to do a lot to raise awareness among students of, for instance, a lot of people don’t even know what medication abortion is, right? They don’t know that there’s a pill they could take that’s safer than Tylenol. That ends a pregnancy. And that 54% of pregnancies in the United States of abortions in the United States are done with pills. A lot of people just don’t know what abortion pills are. They don’t know that telemedicine is available in 24 states. And it’s as easy as going on your phone and having a video conference or text meeting with your provider and giving them some information, and then they can mail them to you overnight.

Carrie N. Baker:
And you can do it in the privacy of your own home. A lot of the antiabortion movement has done a lot to stigmatize abortion healthcare, and to make it look like it’s difficult and dangerous. And, you know, and it’s not, it can be really easy through telemedicine, which, you know, some people may not want to do telemedicine, but you know, it’s a telemedicine came about post COVID or during COVID . And we need to do a lot of work to raise awareness among people and to destigmatize abortion, to push against the anti-abortion movement to that has done so much to stigmatize abortion. So just talking openly to give them the information that they need, like, what are the telehealth abortion providers in your state? I always say to students, go to plan C pills.org, which is a wonderful organization that has a dropdown menu by state.

Carrie N. Baker:
You can call up your state. If you’re in a state where abortion is legal, they’ll tell you exactly who the telemedicine providers are in your state. It will also direct you to where you could go for in clinic care, both for abortion pills or for aspiration abortion, and, you know, informing students about crisis pregnancy centers and how to, how to distinguish between a real abortion provider and a fake one. And, you know, mobilizing students around getting a plan B you know, what’s the difference between plan B and abortion pills. A lot of people don’t understand that, right? Plan B is contraception. You take it before you’re pregnant, but maybe after unprotected sex, whereas abortion pills you take after you’re pregnant. And so doing a lot of student education and education around destigmatizing, contraception and abortion healthcare is something that I would recommend.

Heather Shea:
Yeah. Yeah. And Dr. DePiñeres, as I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve also been considering the ways that many states don’t have comprehensive sex education curriculum in K12 schools. Right? So in Michigan, it’s a, it’s a you know, abstinence only focus. And so we, college students arrive on our campuses without some even basic essential knowledge, you know, like, what is plan B? It’s not an abortion pill, right? So like the, the confusion around even reproductive health I think is, is really there. So what beyond abortion care, what other advice would you have for folks who work with college students?

Teresa DePiñeres:
Oh, wow. I mean, education’s super key. Both, most folks don’t know, and this is not just students. This is, you know, don’t know what abortion is. They think they know what abortion is and that’s based on misinformation. They got from somebody they heard. So they don’t know it’s safe. They don’t know. It’s 14 times safer than carrying a pregnancy deter. 14 times safer. That’s a lot, you know, people kind of consider pregnancy as sort of this, you know, one and them thing as oppos, as opposed to a, an abortion, which is much safer, they don’t know that it can be done quite easily. They don’t know that it’s actually safe to do without medical supervision. They and and most of, I think though, when I think about all of it is that it, what I would, if there’s only one message out there for folks that are working with is, do not call the police, do not call the police, do not call the police.

Teresa DePiñeres:
If I there’s not, this is not a time that you are, we are not enforcers of a law that is actually hurting people and actually is causing harm. There is an obligation to the health of your students obligation to our patients. And so health information is actually a human right. Something that the United States has actually signed onto. You can tell them everything about abortion. You can tell them how to, where to get the pills, how to get it, how the pills work. You can give them all that information, start talking about it, bring, you know, bring in a physician, bring in a lawyer, bring in somebody to talk about it. People, you know, there’s a shout out your abortion, do some version of that on campus. You know, they, there’s tons of information out there and it just needs, but there’s also tons of misinformation.

Teresa DePiñeres:
But the information that gets amplified is the negative stuff, as opposed to the folks that are actually, you know, shout out of your abortion is actually great resource because it’s about like how, you know, how I benefited from this. There’s, you know, there’s the turn away study, which shows actually the detrimental effects to mental health, to socioeconomic health and to physical health of people who are denied abortions. That’s the kind of information that needs to be coming out so that people are not set in the, oh, this is a dangerous thing. I have patients coming into me who are just like, I’m scared, this is dangerous, right. That they they’ve managed to get to me. So they know they’re getting abortion and they, so what is all the misinformation out there that’s getting there? We, we have an obligation to, to the people that we serve, however we see them.

Carrie N. Baker:
Yeah. Yeah. And just to follow up, I just want to say in states where abortion is illegal, it’s much trickier, particularly in states with the bounty hunter laws as well. I think that I would recommend that people talk to the council of the university, but I also would like to emphasize that you have free speech rights and you can share information. So you don’t want to be recommending, you know, here’s where you can get abortion pills, you know, online, but you can say here’s where people are getting abortion pills online, and here’s where people are going for medical support. If they need, you know, here are states that have legal abortion. And so, you know, but you have to be really careful because you don’t want to be, you know, in states like Texas, you can’t aid and abet abortion, or you could get sued. And so you really want to have a careful conversation with people at your university and including legal counsel, but you also serve your students. And if your students need critical information, just frame it in terms of education, rather than terms of advice.

Teresa DePiñeres:
And health and human services just came out with that, it’s an obligation to provide abortion care. If it is an emergency, what emergency healthcare. And so that, that’s actually something in the, in our favor. The other, the other point too, is that in terms of legal counsel, unfortunately, because the laws are so open to interpretation, you might have two places, institutions in the exact same state in the exact same city who applying the law differently. So if, if you are going to talk to your legal counsel about it, which you should, you definitely need to not push for the most broad interpretation of that law and not the most limiting because that actually what would end up doing is really making an equitable care within one institution versus another. And that’s, that’s actually not correct. And not just.

Heather Shea:
Yeah, yeah. Let’s, let’s move to that topic of equitability and, and specifically around intersectionality, because I think one of the things that as we think about students from lower income or BIPOC communities being disproportionately effective. So your point about, you know, two campuses in the same city, you know, could be very differently serving different populations Dr. DePiñeres. Can you talk a little bit about how disproportionate access to reproductive healthcare and abortion care in particular has that kind of effect?

Teresa DePiñeres:
So lower income and black and brown, pregnant capable people have always had major barriers to abortion access as well as to pregnancy care access, as well as to contraceptive access, as well as to housing and food and all the other things that make it possible for us to live a, a decent life. This just adds to the funding and other to the other restrictions that have already been in place around abortion already in the states. So implementing these trigger laws. So there’s already been problems with funding. There’s already been barriers, all there’s, this is nothing new for people of lower income and folks and folks of color who can get pregnant. This is not new. This is, this is something that they’ve been that folks have been facing for a very long time. What changed with Roe V. Wade is now it applies to everyone.

Teresa DePiñeres:
So now there’s a little bit more attention being put on the topic, and I’m really glad that that’s the case. That attention is being put on the topic. But I hope it’s not just a fleeting fleeting thing, because what will, what could happen if this is not just a passing fancy, if this is a passing fancy, is that it’s just going to go back to pre row. When people who had means were able to get their abortion, they just went to another country. They went wherever they needed to go. And then it was disproportionately low income and black and brown folks who were, who were actually dying from abortion complications or dying from their pregnancy complications. And not coincidentally, since these all happen, all these states are doing trigger laws happen to have the highest mortality rates in the country. Basically pregnant folks will die and suffer adverse mental health, economic, and health consequences to a magnitude to get another magnitude.

Teresa DePiñeres:
And I guess another point too, is that there’s also, I think self-managed abortion is something that is quite safe and has been studied quite extensively and has been, has been done for years in the United States and outside of the United States. So, and really nobody should have to go to fear to go to jail for ending a pregnancy, but what’s going to happen is state based legislation, aiming to criminalize pregnant people is going to criminalize the folks that have already disproportionately been decriminal that is low income folks, that’s black and brown folks. And so this, so it’s, this is going to be a really a justice issue because the folks that are going to get arrested are the folks that get arrested, you know, right now the jail, the system is not based on crimes. It’s based on who doesn’t have the money to get a good lawyer to get, to keep them out of jail.

Teresa DePiñeres:
You know, a huge proportion of people that can’t just pay bail. They just can’t pay bail. So that there, that is going to rise in incrementally in that’s going to just rise disproportionately with with folks really wanting to criminalize self-manage abortion, which is why I said what I said before that do not call the police. Unfortunately, folks that think they’re helping by calling the police are actually hurting. We’ve seen this with the, we’ve seen this already with the black lives matters movement that it’s just like calling the police is not helpful. And it’s inter in these cases, what people need is support

Heather Shea:
Dr. Baker, do you want to follow up?

New Speaker:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So already half of people who get abortions in the United States live in poverty, 75% are low income. Part of the reason for that is, is these are folks that don’t have access to reproductive healthcare to start with. So they don’t have access to reliable contraception. They don’t have access to the resources to be to, or any healthcare for that matter. And so already the people who are needing access to abortion are vulnerable and they’re young by the way. And they’re obviously disproportionately female. And so who already, you know, have lower wages and are taking care of other children and all of that. And so I think that, you know, post Roe, these are the folks that are not going to be able to travel out of state that are not going to have the resources to fly to a, a state that has legal abortion.

Carrie N. Baker:
And so they’re disproportionately going to look for, to self manage. It’s often they’re going to try to end their pregnancies. And the fear is that they’re going to use dangerous tech, you know, techniques that they’re going to use unsafe methods. And the fact of the matter is pre-Roe, we didn’t have abortion pills, but we have abortion pills now, but how do they find out about them? How do they use them safely? And how do they keep out from, you know, experiencing criminal justice consequences. And so there are organizations out there, like the repro legal helpline, which is there to consult with people. They have a legal defense fund that can, you know, so the movement is trying to create infrastructure to support people, but it’s a matter of getting people aware of these organizations. There’s also an organization called the miscarriage and abortion hotline, which is staffed by doctors and nurses available almost every hour of the day.

Carrie N. Baker:
You can text or call them. So if you, you know, if a student gets a hold of abortion pills they can get support from doctors and, and medical providers. There are also, you know peer to peer support groups like repro care and other organizations, there is this infrastructure developing to support people, but people need to know about it, and they need to know how to, you know, search online in ways that can’t be detected in case there is criminal justice implications. But, you know, the fact of the matter is, as Dr. DePiñeres said, the people that are going to most likely get turned into the cops are the most vulnerable people, young people, people of color, low income people, and that’s, you know, a tragedy in this, you know, and, but that’s how it’s always been. Right? Yeah. We need to really be working to try to protect those communities in particular, as we shift into this post Roe period where some states criminalize abortion healthcare.

Teresa DePiñeres:
I want to be really clear that self-managed abortion is not the last final, like the, the step of, of like desperation. It’s actually a very feasible, very safe method of ending of terminated pregnancy. Abortion is safe. It is safe. Yeah. No matter how it’s administered. So I just want to be really clear about that. It’s not the last resort. It’s actually a really, it’s a, actually a really resort and it is in, and so I just want to really put that out there that it’s not it’s what is the danger of self-managed abortion is the legal system that is right. And, and that could, unfortunately, that could be folks that are trying to help like folks in the health system. You know, the folks in the health system sometimes call like child protective services or the, or the police or whatever, in this, in this vein of helping, when what they’re doing is just actually introducing their patients and their clients into the criminal justice system, which is not going to help anyone in any way.

Heather Shea:
Right. Right.

Carrie N. Baker:
Yeah. And abortion pills are safer than Tylenol. And very rarely do you need to go to a hospital or go to a provider, but the hotline, the miscarriage and abortion hotline is nice, because if you’re worried, if you’re having, if you’re bleeding a lot or you’re worried, or you’re in pain, to be able to talk to a provider who says, everything’s fine, don’t, you don’t need to go to a doctor. And if you do end up going to a emergency room, you don’t need to tell them you took pills because there’s no way to test for it. And the treatment is the exact thing you present as having a miscarriage. And the treatment is the exact same whether you took pills or whether the miscarriage happened without pills naturally. So I think that’s really important to emphasize to people

Heather Shea:
That is absolutely that’s great information. I mean, I think one of the biggest questions is where do we get reliable information and how do we, who work in college and university campuses, connect students to reliable sources of information. And I’m recognizing there’s a slew of health information, resources out there. There’s also legal information. And so one of the questions I have is, you know, as the laws are constantly shifting and changing, you know, where are the places that we can know? What is, what is the current status of the laws in our states? And then how do we navigate those laws? Dr. Baker, do you want to talk a little bit about that and then we’ll move to the next, yeah.

Carrie N. Baker:
Yeah. One great source for law is the Institute, which has state policy briefs on each state. So you can go on their website, select your state, and it’ll tell you exactly what your rights are. But in addition, the plan C pills.org website, if you select your state, it will tell you what your legal options. They actually use a red light, yellow light green light model. So they’ll say what green light, totally legal. What’s yellow, not, it’s not really certain, like if you order from aid access, which is a European based abortion provider, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, you can order pills from abroad. There’s not, and you’re in a state that doesn’t criminalize self-managed abortion. That’s yellow light because it’s not explicitly prohibited, but it’s not, it’s outside the medical system. So it’s kind of yellow light versus red light, which, you know, they’ll say, this is, this is criminalized in your state. So that’s a really good resource. If you go to their guide to pills on plan C pills.org, select your state, and then look for the red light, green light, yellow light legal, and they have a lot of legal information there and they update it constantly. So that’s really good cutting edge information about the legality. And then if, when Hal’s repro legal helpline is another good source for law.

Teresa DePiñeres:
I want to emphasize, I want to just clarify that the yellow part about aid access is, has nothing to do with it being outside of the medical system. It has to be that they’re using medications that are not FDA they’re outside of the country. So they’re cheaper and not FDA approved, but the exact same medication. And that’s a reason doesn’t make it illegal. It just may, just, it, but it’s one of those things that it’s this gray area that if somebody decided, okay, let’s try to, let’s try to criminalize it. They potentially could, would they have a ground? Probably not, but I just, I just want to make it clear that getting, getting pills from, from, from access is not illegal all in itself. It just, there’s some regulatory things. The thing around medication abortion that is really hard is that there there’s legality like state things.

Teresa DePiñeres:
There is telehealth laws that dictated there is licensing laws who can provide it. There is, you know, what regimen you could use, which could be different. There’s so many different laws that inside into this, into it, that sometimes it basically what it does, it scares off people from even trying. Mm. Yeah. And, but that doesn’t make it any less safe or any less appropriate. It just happens to be that you have to run through a whole lot of hoops, which of course is the intention of all these laws, right. To make it seem like I’m not even going to bother. And, and the intention and the, the, the, the confusion regarding the laws is actually my, one of my biggest concerns is that folks actually think abortion is illegal when it’s, when it’s really, when it’s not, when there’s ways to access it, because, you know, right.

Teresa DePiñeres:
We don’t know it could be, and it’s not just the students. It could be the doc doctors who think it’s illegal. You know, so this is really important to know that this is not like it’s not completely illegal regardless of what state you’re. I mean, regardless if you’re in a state that has not had a trigger law, but that’s going to be hard because it’s very similar. It’s probably very similar, honestly, to sort of COVID the COVID restriction. Yeah. You don’t know, you know, you suddenly cross, you suddenly cross a border and you are supposed to not supposed to wear a mask. How is that helpful? You know, like it, it just, it basically makes it so that somebody is legal in one state and illegal in another state, all that does is create confusion and fear. Yeah.

Carrie N. Baker:
And by the way, plan C also lists vetted websites, international pharmacies that sell pills that have been tested by plan C. So if you want to just order the pills directly and have them mailed to you, and then you can use M and a, or there’s other resources about how to use the pills once you get them. And by the way, they’re very easy to use. And it’s very, the instructions are pretty simple, but that’s another sort of yellow light aspect of plan C is that they have vetted these pharmacies, but, you know, you’re ordering pills from abroad without a prescription. People do it all the time to get cheaper medication, but it’s technically outside of what the FDA recommends. So it’s, that’s why it’s yellow light.

Heather Shea:
So this, we always run out of time on this podcast. So we’re, we’re at our final question. And we always ask the same question at the end. So our podcast is called student affairs now we’d love to hear if there were subject that we didn’t get a chance to talk about today. What are you currently pondering questioning excited about troubling. And then if you wouldn’t mind sharing how people can get in touch with you or, or way to connect with your agencies, that would be wonderful. So I didn’t put an order on here, but why don’t we start with you, Dr. DePiñeres?

Teresa DePiñeres:
Okay. So probably the thing that is on my mind, honestly, around the SCOTUS ruling is how it’s going to impact so many other rights that have taken so long gain such as a right to be treated equally, regardless of race or other status. Those, those that’s on the line, that’s really on the line because the arguments by which, you know, by which Roe was overturned, had to do with basically like it wasn’t meant to be anyway. And you could say that about anything. And so that’s actually what concerns me the most. And, but what excites me is that this is lighting a fire a bit a prior in, in a way that I wish had been started a really long time ago when Roe because this, these laws and restrictions have been around since Roe V Wade was passed. So, but I’m really looking forward to movement and hoping that we are listening to the voices of the folks that are most impacted by this law. so the black and, and brown pregnant people, pregnant, capable people.

Heather Shea:
Thank you. Thank you so much. Oh,

Teresa DePiñeres:
And how get a hold of me? You can get a hold of me through LinkedIn, Theresa DePiñeres. You’ve also, I could put my email probably in the site so that we can kind of get, you can get ahold of me there. So

Heather Shea:
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Dr. Baker, final thoughts. What are you thinking about troubling, and then how can folks get in touch with you?

Carrie N. Baker:
Well, something that I want to say to student affairs people is that this decision is going to be hard on our students and because it represents it’s the first time the Supreme court has ever taken away a constitutional right. And as Dr. DePiñeres said, I don’t think it’s going to be the first right that’s taken away in the coming years. The court is, is positioned to take away affirmative action in the next term, they’re threatening access to contraception and to same sex marriage. And I, I think it’s going to take an emotional toll on many of our students, students that believe in social justice and believe in human rights to see their country taking those rights away in a, quite a very undemocratic way. The rollback of voting rights, the racist attacks by you know, what’s been happening like on January 6th. I think that student affairs people need to pay attention to students, mental health, and need to strategize about how, how can students survive this sort of attack on them and their rights.

Carrie N. Baker:
And in particular, I want to talk about female students or women because women’s rights are being dismantled. And the rights of people of color are being dismantled and it’s misogynist and it’s racist. And I think that we need to help them like emotionally deal with that. . And what does it mean for their generation that they have less rights than their parents had and sometimes even their grandparents and what are they going to do about that? What does that mean for their lives, for their opportunities? I mean, if you have students living on campus on, in states where they don’t have abortion rights, what is that going to do for their ability to plan, to go to school, to plan, to go to higher education, to go on to graduate school, to get a job. I mean, this is going to significantly impact their economic futures, their health futures.

Carrie N. Baker:
We need to be there for them to talk about these things and to, you know, a lot of them are going to want to become activists to fight that. And, you know, that’s going to be difficult. I mean, I know at least my students are emotionally devastated by some of these decisions. . So I think that student affairs folks need to keep that in mind, students are going to be venting about that. They’re going to be suffering from that and to be there for them, and, and to be able to have conversations with them and to support them is going to be really important from a student affairs perspective and from a faculty perspective, quite frankly. Yeah. As far as getting in touch with me I’m cBaker@smith.edu. I also write regularly for Ms. Magazine. So you can follow me on Twitter at Carrie N. Baker. And I’m also on LinkedIn as well and, and Instagram and other things. So I all my articles, I post on social media and I write on recent legal changes around this issue. And so, yeah, follow me or email me directly.

Heather Shea:
Wonderful. Yeah. To my colleagues, you just really hit, I think on what I was hoping for this episode to be, which is a resource for folks as we work through the challenges of the, you know, recent changes in the law, but also in terms of how our students are going to be responding to those changes. And, you know, like, like all the Supreme court decisions that come down in the middle of the summer, they will have a trickle down and fallout effect once students are back in the fall. And so hopefully this resource today will provide some opportunity for folks to kind of think about what are they going to do when students are back in the fall. Thank you to both of you so much for your time today. So grateful for your contributions at the conversation. And I will, you know, leave it at that today and look forward to touching base with you all soon.

Heather Shea:
I am so grateful for each of your time today on the podcast. Thank you so much. Sending also heartfelt appreciation to our dedicated behind the scenes work of Nat Ambrosey, our production assistant. Thanks so much Nat. If you are listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at studentaffairsnow.com and scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our MailChimp list while you’re there. Check out our growing archives. Thanks to the sponsors of today’s episode LeaderShape partners with colleges and universities to create transformational leadership experiences, both virtual and in person for students and professionals. With a focus on creating a more, just caring and thriving world. LeaderShape Offers, engaging learning experiences and courageous dialogue, integrity, equity, resilience, and community building to find out more police visit www.leadershape.org/virtualprograms, or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Heather Shea:
How will your institution rise to reach today’s socially conscious generation. These students report commitments to safety, wellbeing, and inclusion, as important as academic rigor when selecting a college it’s time to reimagine the work of student affairs as an investment, not an expense for over 20 years Vector Solutions, which now includes the campus prevention network form. Formerly EverFi has been the partner of choice for 2000 colleges and universities and national organizations. With nine efficacy studies behind our courses, you can trust and have full confidence that you will be using the standard of care for student safety, wellbeing, and inclusion transform the future of your institution and the community you serve. Learn more at vectorsolutions.com/studentaffairsnow. Please take a moment to visit our website and click on our sponsors link to learn more again, I’m Heather Shea, thanks to our listeners and to everybody who’s watching and listening, make it a great week.

Websites:

Carrie Baker’s Ms. magazine articles: https://msmagazine.com/author/carriebaker/ 

Books:

Article citations: 

“Access to Medication Abortion Among Massachusetts’ Public University Students,” with Julia Mathis, Contraception: An International Reproductive Health Journal 109: 32-36 (December 27, 2021).

https://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824(21)00479-0/fulltext