College Can Be Where Life Starts. Now It’s About Ending It.
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DW Opinion

College Can Be Where Life Starts. Now It’s About Ending It.

"College life" now comes with ready access to abortion.

Simon Olech
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8 min

Students typically go to college to pursue higher education grounded in eternal principles, aiming to understand the good, the true, and the beautiful. Now they can also get abortions.

Many schools across the country are providing abortion pills on campus for students, allowing them to kill their babies still in the womb. What’s even more depressing is the fact that many of these institutions are being forced to offer these life-ending drugs due to state law.

How do pill abortions work? As Planned Parenthood describes, it starts with the patient taking mifepristone, which blocks necessary nutrients from getting to the “pregnancy.” Then a second pill, misoprostol, is taken shortly afterward, which causes cramping and bleeding to empty the woman’s uterus, describing it as “very similar to an early miscarriage.”

It should be noted that most abortions in the formal healthcare system are now carried out through “medication,” with 63% of all abortions in 2023 done by pill, adding up to 642,700. For a student, this would likely be done in a shared dorm or restroom, with little to no support.

Despite the fact that this “treatment” aims at killing a child and has also been proven to occasionally have injurious, if not deadly, consequences for the women using it, the Colorado legislature has deemed this “necessary” for student safety.

For example, Colorado Governor Jared Polis recently signed House Bill 1335, requiring academic institutions with a health center to provide abortion medication to all students starting in August of next year. Although there is a religious exemption clause, many schools will begin stocking shelves with these drugs.

However, this practice has been developing for almost a decade. In 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the first bill of this kind, mandating that all public colleges in California offer the drugs. It applies to over 30 campuses and hundreds of thousands of female students.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) advertises this service online, telling students, “Medication abortion services are now available at The Ashe Center for pregnancies up to 70 days (10 weeks).” Littered with Planned Parenthood graphics, instructions, and directions to the clinic, it aims to make killing one’s child as supportive as possible. UC Riverside even states “medications will be mailed directly to the patient for secure delivery,” with virtual follow-ups scheduled shortly after.

In fiscal year 2024-2025 alone, the 10 University of California campuses facilitated a total of 297 chemical abortions, receiving $2,492,326.63 in reimbursements from the College Student Right to Access Act grant, according to the 2025 Report of the California Commission on the Status of Women & Girls.

New York is even worse, as a bill signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2023 mandates “every campus of the state university of New York and every campus of the city university of New York provide access to medication abortion.” Senate Bill S1214B provides this access to campuses, including the Fashion Institute of Technology, which is 81% female.

As of 2022, Massachusetts has also signed an extreme bill establishing a separate fund called the Public University Health Center Sexual and Reproductive Health Preparation Fund to assist in medication abortion readiness. It is administered by the Department of Public Health and tasked with providing grants to pay for the cost of direct and indirect medication abortion readiness, prioritizing schools. It pays for elements including equipment, facility and security upgrades, telehealth services, staff abortion training, and billing specialist consultation.

It applies to public community colleges, state universities, and the University of Massachusetts campuses. Live Action News discovered that one of these campuses, Salem State University, offers the abortion pill up to 11 weeks of pregnancy, which is after the FDA-approved 10-week gestational limit.

Another state to pass similar legislation is Illinois, whose Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 3709, requiring each public institution of higher education with student health services to provide students with access to medication abortion, which started this past school year.

These services can be provided through health services, telehealth, or other licensed external providers, but all schools with a pharmacy must provide them in person. It names schools, including the University of Illinois, Illinois State University, and Northeastern Illinois University, as participants.

Other states, such as Delaware, Connecticut, Maryland, and Vermont, have less stringent laws, requiring “abortion access” in broader terms.

On the West Coast, Washington is currently considering a bill that would “require public colleges and universities to provide students with access to medication abortion services through student health centers or coordinated referral and telehealth options.” It would start in the 2027-2028 academic year and apply to public four-year institutions, community and technical colleges, and other public postsecondary institutions.

While legislation like this might come as a surprise to some, I don’t see why.

It’s been evident for years that most of modern academia is a hotbed for leftist ideology and liberal professors. And since abortion is one of the top priorities of the modern Left and is advertised as a human right and a freeing act, it slowly seeps into students’ malleable minds.

The numbers show that in 2025, there were an estimated 1.1 million abortions provided by U.S. clinicians, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. Most importantly, the abortion rate for women aged 15-44 was 16.7 per 1,000, a stunning sum.

The more colleges discuss the topic and masquerade taking a life-ending drug as a responsible act, the more of it you will have, and the greater the uproar will be when it is outlawed.

Abortion has even infiltrated segments of American culture, with movies like Unpregnant (2020) depicting abortion as a necessary evil, causing teenagers to cross state lines to receive one. There are even social media videos showing young mothers promoting it with celebration and applause, or justifying it on the grounds of unforeseen illnesses that could have complicated the child’s life.

What makes abortion-enticing laws so immoral is not only the fact that they give students more access to this, but also the fact that they promote more premarital sex and the “hookup culture,” which often ruins people’s lives and promotes chaotic relationships. Why do prominent institutions and state legislatures feel the need to pervert an academic environment into something hedonistic and deadly?

As I said at the beginning of this article, college is a place for students to learn about important topics that will not only assist their professional careers but also teach them how to be good, responsible adults and citizens. But being a citizen starts with the family, the prime building block of a community, and if students continue to be sexualized and then given a “quick fix” through abortion, our nation will shortly forget what it means to live the good life and rot in our carnal pleasures.

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Simon Olech is a student at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, studying politics and history. He is a freelance contributor and producer for The College Fix, and his work has appeared in publications including the Daily Wire and Washington Examiner.

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