With options for on-campus abortion unclear, a grassroots group of Barnard and Columbia students are taking matters into their own hands to help other students obtain abortion care.
More than two years after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, 41 states have some form of abortion restrictions, and 13 have total abortion bans in place. One of the populations these bans have hit the hardest has been young people, who are less independent and have fewer resources for money and travel. Many college students, in particular, have seen their own reproductive rights change in just the time they’ve been in school. Students in red states, who may have entered college with abortion legal in some cases, now face partial or total restrictions when it comes to getting care.
Now that Donald Trump has won the election, activists are worried that a nationwide abortion ban might be on the table, making it more crucial than ever that young women have access to as many reproductive healthcare options as possible to prepare for the next four years. Even in states where abortion is still legal, abortion is not necessarily available through college health services, leaving students to find their own care.
In New York City, students at Barnard College—the historically women’s college affiliated with Columbia University just across the street—are working to help their peers access abortions. Because Barnard does not currently offer abortion on campus, finding care is still a struggle even for students in New York—a state that’s become a haven for out-of-state abortion patients—even at a women’s college that was one of the Seven Sisters.
Since even before Roe fell, the Reproductive Justice Collective (RJC), a grassroots group of Barnard and Columbia students, has been sending emails and scheduling meetings with Barnard College administration to urge them to make medication abortion available to students.
After the Dobbs decision in 2022, Barnard announced that it would begin providing abortion pills on campus. In October 2022, Barnard dean Leslie Grinage and chief health officer Dr. Marina Catallozzi wrote in an email to students, “Our campus providers will be prepared and trained in the provision of medication abortion by Fall 2023.” Two years later, medication abortion is still not available through Barnard health services.
“I think it was a promise they wanted to make but were unable to keep due to a lack of prioritization,” Ramya Arumilli, a Barnard College senior and co-lead organizer of RJC, told Ms. in an interview, “and I think it comes down to administrative management.”
Years of Effort
In 2023, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill requiring the state’s two public university systems—the State University of New York (SUNY) and the City University of New York (CUNY)—to help students at all 89 campuses access abortion pills. At the time, students from RJC were hopeful that medication abortion would also soon be available at private colleges and universities like Columbia and Barnard.
In December 2022, members of RJC attended a rally in Riverside Park near campus with bill sponsor state Sen. Cordell Cleare and Rep. Harvey Epstein to garner support for the bill. At the rally (which I also attended as a Columbia student myself interested in reproductive rights), Epstein told a cheering crowd, “Students rely on their health centers for medical care. Abortion is medical care, yet far too many schools do not provide access to abortion services at their health centers. As we face an increasingly hostile environment for civil rights, in New York we’re fighting back to guarantee not only the right to abortion but access to it for a population that has limited time, resources and transportation options.”
More than a year later, in March 2024, Columbia Health announced the university would begin offering medication abortion on campus to students. Columbia’s announcement came a year after Barnard announced their own plan to begin training campus providers to provide students with medication abortion by the fall of 2023. Then, Barnard pushed back its rollout to May of this year.
Now, in November, Barnard’s Primary Care Health Service (PCHS) website states that birth control and emergency contraception are available to students on campus as well as “abortion referrals.”
“It seems like [Barnard was] very eager to respond to the current moment [in 2022], to media pressure, and also this desire to position Barnard as a reproductive health haven that’s leading the way,” Arumilli said.
On Oct. 17, 2024, Barnard hosted a faculty panel on abortion rights called “Global Reproductive Rights and Resistance,” after offering a Spring 2024 course called “Abortion in Context.” Students’ artwork and projects from the class are currently on display in Barnard’s Milstein Library. Still, abortion access on campus remains unclear.
Since Barnard first announced its plans to start providing medication abortion, RJC has followed up several times with administration and Barnard Primary Care Health Service through emails and meetings but has received little or no response. In September, Barnard senior and RJC co-lead organizer Sydney Johnson reached out to Barnard PCHS about medication abortion and did not get a definitive answer. Individual members of RJC have also contacted Barnard PCHS and have gotten nowhere.
When I contacted Barnard via email for comment, their press office issued the statement, “Barnard has and will always prioritize our students’ access to reproductive health care. Everyone who comes to us for reproductive health services, including abortion, receives those services within 24 to 48 hours, either at our Primary Care Health Service (PCHS) or with the support of PCHS.”
Barnard also responded that the delay in providing medication abortion is due to PCHS still figuring out logistics, adding that PCHS plans to conduct focus groups before the fall semester ends. In the meantime, students can request a referral to a local provider, including providers who are part of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) on 168th Street.
On Oct. 29, 2024, I emailed Barnard’s Dr. Catallozzi to ask about any recent updates on Barnard PCHS making medication abortion available for students on campus and did not get a response.
Options for Students
RJC confirmed that students can only access abortion by traveling to an external clinic. Current options for students include CUIMC, the Central Harlem Sexual Health Clinic and Planned Parenthood in the Bronx—“but the Bronx is quite far,” Johnson said. These three options either operate on a sliding scale or otherwise make abortion available at a reduced cost to students and lower-income people.
Students unable to travel to a clinic can also order medication abortion online. However, Johnson explained that telehealth abortion can be more expensive for patients because insurance companies usually don’t cover the cost of pills ordered online.
(Despite the cost, a 2024 survey found that 71 percent of college students use telehealth services, often for birth control and other sexual health services. As more and more states pass restrictive reproductive healthcare laws, many students attend college in contraceptive or pharmacy “deserts” where medications like birth control are difficult to get except through telehealth. This issue is especially prevalent for low-income students at HBCUs and colleges in Southern or Midwestern states.)
Even with these alternative options, in our interview, RJC members explained that students being able to access medication abortion at their own college is crucial to reduce the extra barriers of cost and travel time that makes abortion difficult for many students to access.
Arumilli said that for colleges like Barnard and Columbia in New York City, many students come from out of state or out of the country. (In 2023, Barnard’s students came from 46 different U.S. states and 14 percent of students were international. About 79 percent of Columbia students come from out of state and almost 20 percent are international.) Especially because abortion access can be so expensive in New York, “being able to access abortion on campus within your own community with your support system is really important for students, especially when they tend to be removed from their homes and have just moved or are still navigating the college experience.”
Meanwhile, in the two years since Dobbs, New York and other states with legal abortion have seen a flow of patients from other states with abortion bans who can afford to seek an abortion somewhere else.
“A lot of people are flying in or driving into New York from states like Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas that have a lot more restrictions on abortion,” Arumilli said. As a result, clinics in the area are facing high patient volume that increases wait times and limitations for New York college students seeking the same services. “I think it’s a responsibility in part of Columbia [and Barnard] to redirect some of that because they are imposing so much on the city itself as a gentrifying force.”
Providing abortion on campus, she said, would be a way for Barnard and Columbia to “redirect resources and to ensure that it’s a little bit more equitable in terms of the system.”
In the past, RJC has also emphasized the greater privacy and support students might feel in the familiarity and community of their own college as opposed to having to navigate their own abortion care in a new city in the stressful situation of an unplanned pregnancy.
In 2022, in response to Columbia’s claim that “private physicians’ offices are usually less crowded” and “clinics or nonprofits such as Planned Parenthood may allow greater anonymity,” Barnard then-senior and former RJC member Niharika Rao told The New York Times, “I would argue it is more anonymous to go to your campus clinic.”
Now, Columbia Health’s website has a page called “Termination of Pregnancy” and a link to a PDF document that states, “Columbia Health provides pregnancy options counseling and if appropriate, can provide medication abortion.”
While it’s unclear if and when Barnard students will be able to access abortion through Barnard PCHS, Columbia students, at least in theory, can receive abortion pills through Columbia Health. But in early October, at least one Columbia student went to RJC for help after two health offices at Columbia told them that they didn’t know if medication abortion was available. According to Arumilli, the group has heard from students who have called Columbia Health regarding medication abortion and “not heard encouraging things,” with Columbia Health representatives allegedly telling them that abortion is not currently available.
I contacted Columbia Health on Oct. 17, 2024, for clarification as to whether or not medication abortion is available on campus. At the time of this writing, there has been no response.
However, after RJC published an op-ed on Oct. 29 in the student newspaper the Columbia Daily Spectator, the group received an email from Columbia Health on Oct. 31 confirming that medication abortion is available for students on campus. According to the email, “Columbia Health can confirm that the service is being utilized and that the referral processes and workflows we carefully established are directing students to the appropriate level of care.”
The response also asked RJC to encourage the students who reached out to them after not receiving helpful information from Columbia to email Columbia Health again.
Students Supporting Students
With options for on-campus abortion unclear, students from RJC have taken matters into their own hands to help other students find information about where and how to get abortion care. The group is currently in the process of developing a campus abortion doula collective to support students in the process of getting abortions, whether through Columbia health services or not.
An abortion doula, according to Johnson, is “somebody trained by community resources […] somebody who can support people throughout the process of having an abortion.” A similar abortion doula collective started at Oberlin College in Ohio to provide students with help. RJC’s abortion collective at Barnard and Columbia will offer students a wide range of support for finding abortion care, from directing them to clinics around the city and abortion funds for financial support to helping them write notes to professors explaining when they’ll have to miss class. “We think that students should be able to have emotional and practical resources if they are accessing any sort of abortion care,” Johnson said.
Mental health resources are a particular concern for many Barnard students pushing for medication abortion on campus. According to Johnson, RJC has heard from students worried that even if Barnard implements medication abortion, students’ only resource for emotional support will be Barnard’s Furman Counseling Center. Many students report that it can be difficult to get an appointment due to high patient volume and long wait times, and Furman tends to offer only a finite number of appointments with a counselor before referring a student out to an external provider, according to Johnson. She said that RJC’s abortion doula collective will try to help fill this emotional support gap by suggesting self-care practices like yoga “or just being somebody to hold your hand and have a chat with you.”
“We want to be able to provide those sorts of resources to students, and we’re doing that ourselves by starting a collective regardless of whether Barnard chooses to provide abortion pills soon,” Johnson said. No matter whether abortion is available on or off campus, “people in our age group are still accessing abortion care and need to have support.”
Access to EC … is imperative for promoting overall well-being and decreasing anxiety around unplanned pregnancies, ultimately allowing students to focus on their education.
Lilah Penchaszadeh Robert, Columbia University student
While Barnard continues to stall the medication abortion rollout, both Barnard and Columbia offer emergency contraception (also known as EC, Plan B or the morning-after pill) through their health services as well as through vending machines in undergraduate dorms on both campuses.
However, even with vending machines selling emergency contraception, Columbia sophomore and RJC co-lead for campus reproductive access Marisol Rojas-Cheatham described several “general access issues” for Columbia students trying to get the medication. Rojas-Cheatham has heard from several students that the machines—one at Barnard and two at Columbia—are unreliable and aren’t always stocked with the medication. Even when it’s available, the emergency contraception can cost as much as $40, she said. At the same time, students aren’t always aware of additional options to get emergency contraception that insurance will cover through university health services.
Much like RJC’s abortion doula collective, where student volunteers help other students through the process of getting an abortion, Rojas-Cheatham leads a group of students who help other students access emergency contraception. She is a student partner with the nonprofit organization Emergency Contraception 4 Every Campus (EC4EC). EC4EC is not affiliated with Columbia, but sends Rojas-Cheatham emergency contraception, which she and a group of students distribute anonymously to other students free of charge when they fill out a form from a QR code on posters that the group has put up around Columbia’s campus.
“The work that [our group] does to ensure accessibility to reproductive healthcare products on campus is essential for Columbia’s community,” said Lilah Penchaszadeh Robert, a Columbia first-year who started volunteering this semester. “As a student distributor, I get to witness firsthand how important accessibility to EC is in a university setting.
“I believe that access to EC, as well as providing a platform by which students can discuss and address their reproductive needs openly, is imperative for promoting overall well-being and decreasing anxiety around unplanned pregnancies, ultimately allowing students to focus on their education.”
Future Plans
Looking forward, Rojas-Cheatham is hoping to petition Columbia to decrease the cost of vending machine EC to $5 or $10. In the meantime, though, “doing peer-to-peer distribution” is crucial for helping make emergency contraception accessible for other students who might not be able to easily get it from the university.
When it comes to both EC and medication abortion, RJC is hoping not only for better student access but also more transparency from Barnard and Columbia about the resources they have available. Besides establishing an abortion doula collective, RJC is currently working on creating a comprehensive guide for Columbia and Barnard students about the reproductive healthcare available to them at both campuses, since many students either don’t know about the process of getting care or mistakenly believe that Barnard currently offers abortion.
“One of the issues we identified is how hard it is to figure it out, even if you look it up online and you’re a student,” said Columbia junior and RJC Lead for Queer and Trans Health Kira Ratan. “It is not straightforward or clear at all.”
RJC is continuing to push for medication abortion at Barnard. However, the group is also directing resources toward helping other students find outside care in the event that abortion isn’t available anytime soon. At the end of our interview, Johnson stressed that RJC is available as a free and confidential resource, and students should reach out to them for help if they’re struggling to access care through Columbia or Barnard.
Looking ahead, Johnson said that she “definitely still [has] hope” that Barnard will eventually make abortion available. In the meantime, though, RJC will keep working to “really ensure that students who are seeking those services are being provided with adequate care and resources here on campus,” even if those resources have to come from peer volunteers.
Students at Columbia or Barnard who need help getting an abortion can contact RJC’s abortion doula group for more information and support through their website or by emailing reprojusticebarnard@gmail.com. Students can also fill out this form to request free, confidential emergency contraception delivered to their dorm rooms.
