Abortion bans are forcing American students to rethink their college plans

July 11 (Reuters) – With its excellent academic and music programs, Ohio’s Oberlin College seemed like a perfect fit for Nina Huang, a high school student from California who plays the flute and piano and hopes to eventually study medicine or law.

But Huang, 16, said she crossed the college off her list of candidates after Ohio enacted a near-total abortion ban last month. Now she plans to cast a wider net for schools in states with less restrictive laws.

“I don’t want to go to school in a state that has a ban on abortion,” she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 case that legalized abortion nationwide, has some students rethinking their plans for higher education as states rush to ban or restrict abortion, according to interviews with 20 students and college counselors across the country.

While it has long been the case that some students have been hesitant to attend schools in places with different political leanings than their own, recent actions by conservative states on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights have deepened polarization in the country.

For some students, the restrictions raise concerns that they won’t be able to get an abortion if they need one, or that they will face gender discrimination. Others said they worried about facing racial prejudice or being politically ostracized.

“I’m only in high school right now and I’m still figuring out who I am,” said Samira Murad, 17, who will be a senior this fall at Stuyvesant High School in New York. “I don’t want to move somewhere where I can’t be myself because of the laws put in place.”

It is too early to determine whether such concerns will affect admissions in a measurable way, and evidence from other recent divisive laws suggests that there may be little overall impact.

But after Roe was overturned, college counselors said abortion figured prominently in many conversations with clients, with some going so far as to turn down their dream schools.

“Some of our students have specifically stated that they will not apply to colleges and universities in states that may infringe on their access to reproductive rights,” said Daniel Santos, CEO of Florida college consulting company Prepory.

“DISTURBING SUBJECT”

Kristen Willmott, a counselor at Top Tier Admissions in Massachusetts, said students she works with have told her they are removing some of the top schools in Texas, Florida and Tennessee from their application lists because of their restrictive abortion laws.

Alexis Prisco, entering her senior year at Eastern Maryland Technical High School, planned to apply to her parents’ alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

However, she feels wary after the state passed a law that effectively bans abortion.

“Now my mom has warned me to be very careful when I apply to schools in states with trigger laws,” Prisco, 17, said, referring to the bans set to go into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

The University of Washington declined to comment, but shared a June 24 statement in which university leaders acknowledged the fears and frustrations felt by some after the court decision. Oberlin College did not respond to requests for comment.

Several students have expressed similar concerns about attending college in North Carolina after the state passed a law in 2016 limiting which bathrooms transgender people could use, said counselor Jason Weingarten of New York-based Ivy Coach.

But he said many still chose to attend Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

UNC admissions statistics show that the number of applicants increased by 14% between 2016 and 2017 despite the anxiety of individual students.

Abortion is “a topic that concerns most students, but not something that will dissuade them from going to one of the most selective schools in the country,” Weingarten said.

Shahrin Abedin, a spokeswoman for the University of Texas Medical School, said the school has not seen a drop in applications that can reasonably be attributed to the state’s ban on abortions after six weeks, which went into effect in September.

But for Maryland high school student Sabrina Thaler, the prospect of attending college in a state that bans abortion is troubling.

Thaler, 16, recalled the question she asked her high school class during a discussion in May after the ruling that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade had expired.

“What if I go to college in a state where abortion is illegal and I get raped and then I don’t have an abortion?”

Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California and Rose Horowitz in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Aurora Ellis

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