State legislators are pushing to require universities to offer the chemical abortion pills on campus, and several schools have already begun offering the drug to students through student health centers.
Legislators in some blue states are pushing to require universities to distribute abortion pills to students, and some schools are distributing abortion medications even where the law doesn’t require them to. Abortion pills, which are not the same as emergency contraceptives like Plan B, typically terminate a first-trimester pregnancy through mifepristone, which causes fetal death, and misoprostol, which induces labor, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI).
The University of Illinois Chicago already provides students with abortion medications, as does the University of California, Berkeley, according to The New York Times.
Khiara M. Bridges: Court abortion ruling is an assault on women — and democracyhttps://t.co/UIdFn8qFZO
— UC Berkeley (@UCBerkeley) June 24, 2022
Berkeley offers medication abortions to students on campus throughout the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, according to its website. Pregnant students are screened, go through a medical examination and are given mifepristone at their first appointment, causing fetal death. before taking misoprostol at home 24-48 hours later to induce labor.
Other California universities are slated to join Berkeley in giving students abortion pills when a state law requiring public universities to provide the medication through on-campus student health centers goes into effect Jan. 1, 2023.
The university did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
A similar effort is underway in Massachusetts, where lawmakers are considering a bill that would require colleges to provide abortion pills in campus health centers. The University of Massachusetts Amherst is already planning to offer abortion pills in the fall of 2022.
Pro-life advocates have raised concerns about the growing popularity of medication abortions and their potential safety downsides compared to surgical abortions. (RELATED: Live Babies Left To Die After Failed Abortions, Report Reveals)
“The safety of chemical abortion is greatly exaggerated,” James Studnicki, CLI vice president, said in a statement. “The increasing dominance of chemical abortion and its disproportionate contribution to emergency room morbidity is a serious public health threat, and the real-world data suggests the threat is growing.
Emergency room visits following chemical abortions surged 500% from 2002 to 2015 as the procedure grew in popularity, accounting for 4.4% of abortions at the beginning of the study and 34.1% at the end, a CLI study found.
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