Currently, nearly half of states across the US completely ban or heavily restrict access to abortion, which means that this fall, millions of students will return to college campuses in states without access to abortion care.
According to estimates from the Center for Reproductive Rights, about six million students are expected to attend college in abortion-restricted states. For context, abortion is illegal in 14 states according to the Guttmacher Institute, some of which are home to massive student populations that attend state schools from both in-state and out-of-state, such as Texas, Indiana and Missouri. Other states like Florida and Georgia, which are also home to huge student populations each school year, restrict abortion after six weeks of pregnancy — which essentially acts as an abortion ban.
“Fifty-five percent of the undergraduate students enrolled in college last year were women—and the highest rate of unintended pregnancy in the U.S. is among women 20 to 24 years of age,” the Center for Reproductive Rights wrote, underscoring how heavily these bans impact college-aged people.
Young people can experience particular difficulty accessing abortion. Barriers like cost, travel time, lack of resources, and more all apply to young people, but for those under 18, there can be yet another set of hoops to jump through — even in places that support abortion access.
“We know that young people experience all the burdens, all the barriers that adult abortion seekers do, but in many states where abortion is legal, they also have to deal with parental involvement laws, and so they are facing even more restrictions and more barriers,” MaryRose Mazzola, an attorney and the director of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts ASPIRE Center for Sexual and Reproductive Health, previously told Teen Vogue.
If a college student hasn’t yet turned 18, they may be required to get parental permission before getting an abortion, making the process even more difficult, especially if they don’t want to tell their parents about their pregnancy.
Abortion will be on the ballot in multiple states in November, which could make abortion access either better or worse for people in those places. To highlight the impact that abortion bans have on college students, the Center for Reproductive Rights spoke to students graduating in 2025 about attending school in these states.
“It was incredibly sad to see a privilege I had always taken for granted growing up in a liberal state become an impossibility in the place I live,” a student at Tulane University in Louisiana, where abortion is illegal, said. “This state is rife with problems – violence, climate and infrastructure issues, lack of healthcare access – how about trying to fix some of that instead of stripping away our rights?”
“Going back to campus in an abortion-restricted state makes me incredibly anxious and scared about the inherent loss of autonomy you have over your body,” a Duke University student said. “Losing this freedom of choice threatens to put women back in boxes that we have been struggling to get out of for so long.”
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