NYC’s Barnard College will offer abortion pills to students following Roe V. Wade overturn

Barnard College, a private women’s university in New York City where tuition goes for $57,00 a year, will offer abortion pills to students by next year. 

School officials announced Thursday that Barnard will work to ensure students’ access to abortion health services in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

In a statement to students, college officials wrote: ‘Barnard applies a reproductive justice and gender-affirming framework to all of its student health and well-being services, and particularly to reproductive healthcare. 

‘In the post-Roe context, we are bolstering these services.’

The school is the latest to provide such services to its students after Massachusetts and California enacted laws to do the same their public colleges by 2023. 

New York City’s Barnard College (above), a private women’s university, is set to offer abortion pills to its students by next year

Bernard President Sian Beilock (left) and Marina Catallozzi, the school’s chief health officer, said the move was implemented over the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade

Although New York continues to provide access to abortions, 22 states have enacting laws banning the procedure. 

A majority of the laws were put into place immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision over the summer, which removed women’s federal rights to abortion.  

Bernard President Sian Beilock said that the university’s move was to prepare for any possible barrier to access in the state in order to stand by its student’s reproductive rights. 

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‘I think we’re putting a stake in the ground that we believe that health and wellness is really the institution’s responsibility for students, and we want to do everything we can to support our students,’ she told the New York Times. 

Marina Catallozzi, Barnard’s chief health officer, said the new program would ensure students more privacy at the campus, which already has a vending machine for emergency contraception. 

‘With every reproductive health decision, but particularly around a pregnancy,’ she told the Times. ‘We want to make sure that students have all of the options: if they want to continue a pregnancy, if they want to continue and go on to adoption, if they want to terminate.’ 

The chief health officer added that the option could help students if New York abortion services were ever to become overcrowded by out-of-state residents looking for the procedure because it was banned in their state.  

Public colleges in Massachusetts and California are also poised to offer similar services to distribute the pills (pictured) their students in 2023 

Barnard already has a vending machine that distributes abortion pills for students

While New York has not enacted any laws for public schools to provide this kind of service for their students, Massachusetts and California have. 

Over the summer, Massachusetts passed a law requiring public colleges to submit plans to provide abortion pills to students by November 2023. 

California passed its own law to do the same in 2019, with the legislation set to be enforced by January. 

Conversely, at the University of Idaho, officials sent a memo to all staff about restrictions at the school following the states near-total ban on abortion. 

Employees were warned not to counsel patients about abortion or refer them to any abortion services at the risk of being charged with a felony, fired and permanently barred from working for the state.