Up until a few weeks ago, the website for the University of Texas at Austin’s health center laid out three options for pregnant students to possibly pursue: they can carry the pregnancy to term and raise the child, put the baby up for adoption or terminate the pregnancy.
When the state enacted a law in September that prohibited abortion after about six weeks, the website added language making note of the restriction.
But two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that asserted abortion access as a constitutional right for nearly five decades, the university removed the entire text about pregnant students’ options from its website. What remains are vague instructions.
“If you are pregnant, our Women’s Health providers can discuss options and help connect patients to appropriate resources,” the website now reads.
UT-Austin officials did not respond to questions explaining why they removed the paragraph about pregnant students’ options from its site. But the timing illustrates how public university health centers are rethinking how they can and should communicate with students about reproductive health care amid a vague and rapidly changing legal landscape in Texas.
“It’s put people in a position where they don’t know what they can offer in student health centers, because they don’t know exactly how the law is going to fall out — or even what the law defaulted to after Roe was repealed,” said Gretchen Ely, a social work professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville who focuses on access to reproductive care.
Yet the stakes are high because college students fall in the age group that has historically received the largest percentage of abortions in Texas annually, which puts university health centers on the front lines of…
Up until a few weeks ago, the website for the University of Texas at Austin’s health center laid out three options for pregnant students to possibly pursue: they can carry the pregnancy to term and raise the child, put the baby up for adoption or terminate the pregnancy.
When the state enacted a law in September that prohibited abortion after about six weeks, the website added language making note of the restriction.
But two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that asserted abortion access as a constitutional right for nearly five decades, the university removed the entire text about pregnant students’ options from its website. What remains are vague instructions.
“If you are pregnant, our Women’s Health providers can discuss options and help connect patients to appropriate resources,” the website now reads.
UT-Austin officials did not respond to questions explaining why they removed the paragraph about pregnant students’ options from its site. But the timing illustrates how public university health centers are rethinking how they can and should communicate with students about reproductive health care amid a vague and rapidly changing legal landscape in Texas.
“It’s put people in a position where they don’t know what they can offer in student health centers, because they don’t know exactly how the law is going to fall out — or even what the law defaulted to after Roe was repealed,” said Gretchen Ely, a social work professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville who focuses on access to reproductive care.
Yet the stakes are high because college students fall in the age group that has historically received the largest percentage of abortions in Texas annually, which puts university health centers on the front lines of…Read Morelocal_news
