A growing number of female college applicants may seek to avoid going to school in states where abortion is banned or severely restricted.
While the long-term impacts of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 2022 overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling on college enrolment around the U.S. remain to be seen, research, polls and reports are already showing that an increasing number of young women are factoring in abortion laws when making decisions about where to apply to college.
It was a consideration for some female applicants even before Roe's demise, according to research recently published in the journal Economic Letters.
The study, which used data from colleges ranked in the top 100 from academic years 2018 to 2022, showed that there was nearly a one percentage point decrease in the share of female applicants to institutions in states that banned abortion, compared to states in which abortion remained legal in 2021.
"This suggests that undergraduate applicants are sensitive to state reproductive health policies and that this may impact the demographic composition of colleges and the future labor pool of the affected states," the study said.
The students in question "were applying to colleges in late 2021 as anticipation regarding the possible repeal of Roe v. Wade was heating up," Rajiv Sharma, one of the study's co-authors and a professor at Portland State University, told Newsweek.
"It is possible that these effects will be stronger for subsequent cohorts because state policies regarding access to reproductive health that were merely anticipatory for the Fall 2022 cohort are much clearer for subsequent cohorts."
Since the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization sent the question of abortion back to the states, 14 states have banned the procedure in almost all circumstances while several others have gestational limits on abortion, starting at six weeks of pregnancy.
"My daughter was very concerned about abortion access when she applied to schools," Rosanna Kahn, mother of an MBA student at Drexel University, told The Philadelphia Inquirer last month. Her 20-year-old daughter is studying public health at Gwynedd Mercy University in Pennsylvania, where abortion remains accessible.
"If, heaven forbid, she were to get pregnant," Kahn said, "she and I know we need to be around here, where she can quickly get it taken care of and move on with her life, rather than be living in some place that puts stringent restrictions on women."
Some mothers in Texas, which has one of the nation's strictest abortion bans, have shared on social media that they intend to send their daughters out of state for college.
College counselors have reported parents and students ruling out states like Texas when considering which institutions to apply to.
"We do have kids and parents make comments about red versus blue, conservative versus liberal," Jennifer Schlegel, the co-owner of My Admissions Sherpa, which guides students through the college search and admissions process, told Newsweek. "Very often, the mother will say: no red states."
Meanwhile, universities in those abortion-banning states where a large number of students come from out of state are likely to feel the biggest impact.
The Washington Post last year noted that Rice University in Texas had a quarter of incoming freshmen in 2020 come from states where abortion remains legal, such as New York and California, while 40 percent are from Texas. The university has been contacted for comment via email.
Polls have also shown that current and prospective students are factoring in laws governing reproductive rights when making decisions about college.
A survey by Intelligent.com shortly after Roe was overturned found 26 percent of prospective students would only consider attending a college in a state where abortion is legal. Meanwhile, research from the Gallup and the Lumina Foundation earlier this year found that a majority of college students (72 percent) said reproductive health laws in the state where their college is located was at least somewhat important to their decision of whether to stay enrolled or leave.
But such decisions will likely be limited to students who have the privilege of choosing the state where they attend college, Sharma noted.
"Students whose choice is limited to colleges within their home states (for financial or other reasons) will likely be less sensitive to state abortion policies when making their college decisions," he said.
Those disproportionately affected by abortion bans, such as women of color and those from lower-income households, are less likely to have the luxury of moving out of state for college, noted Mary Ruth Ziegler a law professor at the University of California, Davis, legal historian and author of Roe: The History of a National Obsession.
"I do think we'll see a movement of college students away from red states, but I think that's disproportionately going to be people who can afford to make that decision, both in terms of educational options and money," Ziegler told Newsweek.
"The same people who've already been disproportionately affected by bans are going to be the ones disproportionately affected as college students as well, because they won't have the ability to just go somewhere else."
Have you made decisions about where to apply to attend college based on abortion policies? Email k.rahman@newsweek.com.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Khaleda Rahman is Newsweek's Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on abortion rights, race, education, ... Read more
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