A Likely Post-Roe Future for Higher Education

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft majority opinion stunned the country as people brace for a likely post-Roe future. According to the leaked draft, the conservative-majority Court in a month will likely overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that established abortion as a constitutional right 50 years ago. News sent shockwaves across the higher education landscape.

“I am opposed to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It ignores the opinions of the majority of Americans across the political spectrum,” said Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies and English at Spelman College in Atlanta. “It will also have devastating consequences for women and girls who are unable to secure abortions safely because they are no longer available legally or close to home.”

Nearly one in four women in the United States will have an abortion by age 45, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights and research organization. In addition, recent data shows that women aged 20-24 account for the largest proportion of abortions with women aged 25-29 as the second largest.

Scholars point out that poor women of color who live in conservative-controlled states are the most likely to be impacted by the anticipated end of Roe. Economists filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in response to the Mississippi case months ago. It outlined scholarship that repeatedly shows abortion restrictions hurt the future earnings and educational attainment of women, especially Black and Latinx women.

“When we think about access to abortion, it’s a fundamental right that is critical to a woman’s ability to control her body, her life, and her future,” said Mike Greene, a policy advisor at the American Association of University Women. “Expanding reproductive services increases a woman’s prospects of attaining economic security as well, so these attacks on abortion are a problem for our country. It’s very alarming.”

Dr. Michele Goodwin, Chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California at Irvine, also noted the country’s rising maternal mortality rates and morbidity rates, which disproportionately impact Black women. Goodwin is the author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.

“There are visible and many invisible ways in which women and girls who become pregnant are still shackled to discrimination and stigmatization, and this is happening in the workplace, in places of education, and across society,” she said.