Days after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, UO students and Eugene community members are fearful of the decision’s long-term consequences –– and eager to take action to protect their reproductive rights.
“People are pissed, and that’s a good thing,” Larkin Lucy, a UO senior, multidisciplinary science major and co-director of UO Students for Choice, said. “It means people are ready to show up and fight.”
When Lucy joined Students for Choice as a freshman, she couldn’t have imagined how drastically abortion rights might shift in a handful of years.
“It’s weird to think about how things have changed since then,” Lucy said. “For us, like the student organizers, I think it’s really easy for us to get caught up in all of it. I can get really frustrated –– I mean, I could talk about it forever.”
Students for Choice is a club that promotes student access to reproductive healthcare resources while building solidarity and fostering activism in support of reproductive rights. The club has grown since 1973, when it was established alongside the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. Today, it frequently partners with Planned Parenthood of Southwest Oregon and organizes annual resource fairs in support of reproductive health.
Needless to say, the club has had a busy couple of weeks. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court overturned Roe on June 24 in its landmark Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, stripping the constitutional right to an abortion from millions of individuals. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito argued that abortion destroys “potential life,” and should not be protected.
“We’ve known that this was gonna happen for months,” Sydnee Warren, fellow Students for Choice co-director and rising senior, said. “I’m not like really shocked at this point –– just kind of heartbroken.”
Mikaela Byers, a board member for the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, established an abortion fund that provides a wide range of services and financial support for those in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. She fears for the future of abortion access; she sees it standing on tenuous ground.
“The [Supreme Court] decision was just really, really horrific, and is going to drastically change the abortion access landscape in the United States,” Byers said. “For those of us who are working in abortion funds, we know that Roe was never enough in the first place.”
When Byers applied to be a board member in January, she was already anticipating the potential end of Roe. The Dobbs decision was the culmination of five decades of conservative activism, including a series of contested Supreme Court confirmations during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation — following the death of staunch liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg in October 2020 –– was seen by some as the final nail in the coffin of abortion rights.
A leaked draft opinion written by Alito was published by Politico on May 3, proving similar to the eventual Dobbs decision and offering some advance warning of the controversial ruling. Nonetheless, many were still outraged when the decision came.
Eugene responds
An impromptu “Night of Rage” protest in Eugene on June 24 ended in 10 arrests as protesters clashed with police outside of Dove Medical Center, a pro-life pregnancy clinic that discourages abortions and does not offer abortion services or referrals.
Elijah Comer, 20, was one of the demonstrators arrested by police that night. While police cited him for disorderly conduct, Comer saw the night differently –– and said he felt it was his moral obligation to speak out against the decision.
“I feel powerless most of the time,” Comer said. “So I feel that it’s necessary to go out and talk, speak your voice, be out in the public, say something, and do it in a place where people are going to recognize that.”
Police statements indicated that the crowd of roughly 75 was throwing projectiles, including smoke bombs and water bottles. Several officers reported suffering minor injuries. However, Comer said he was surprised at the number of arrests and criticized the Eugene Police Department’s assessment of the situation.
“I mean, I don’t want [the protest] to be seen as one of those, like, ‘oh yeah it was just violent protesters,’ because that’s just not true… it’s people who are upset because their rights are getting taken away,” Comer said. “Their civil liberties are getting taken away from them on a federal level. It’s ridiculous.”
Comer often attends protests with his group of friends, and said June 24 was not the first incident he’d had with law enforcement. Regardless, he said he was shaken by the arrest, feeling compelled to use more caution when demonstrating on behalf of reproductive rights in the future.
Protests aren’t the only way engagement on abortion rights has increased. Warren said that the Students for Choice Instagram page and email list have both seen major upticks in followers since the Dobbs decision was released. Byers said the NWAAF could take weeks or even months to process their influx of volunteer requests.
Oregon-based companies responded to Dobbs, too. Companies including Columbia Sportswear, Intel, Nike, Salt & Straw and Wieden+Kennedy have issued statements in support of abortion rights and pledged to help employees travel out of state to receive abortions where legal and possible.
What else could be at stake
Dobbs v. Jackson has also stoked fears that other civil rights could potentially be jeopardized by the conservative Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade’s basic premise was staked on the idea of a constitutional right to privacy, which ought to allow pregnant people the right to choose what they do with their bodies. While Alito did not question privacy rights, Justice Clarence Thomas did in a concurring opinion, potentially upending the legal precedent on which Roe –– and other privacy-based rights and protections –– are staked.
“This [decision] is going to attack other rights with the precedent of the right of privacy, from gay rights to the right to contraceptives, and so on,” Warren said. “It’s just a tremendous injustice.”
While Oregon has a liberal record on abortion rights, it won’t be insulated entirely from the consequences of Dobbs. According to the Guttmacher Institute, Oregon could see up to a 234% increase in patients seeking abortion services, largely from Idaho. This would make it more difficult to obtain not just abortions, but other basic healthcare services as well.
“A right to something doesn’t mean that you have access to something,” Byers said. “In Oregon, we have the right, but the wait times might be longer, it might get more expensive. So I do hope that we will see more cities and states step up to allocate money to our fund, to allocate money to reproductive health services … and, of course, more clinics, especially in areas that have more barriers to access like eastern Oregon.”
Likewise, Lucy said that abortion bans and restrictions will have outsized effects on marginalized communities, including racially diverse and gender-diverse populations. Those without the resources to travel to abortion-friendly states, even with help from abortion funds like the NWAAF, will also likely suffer disproportionate impacts.
Moving the fight forward
In spite of the massive setback of Dobbs and the enormous challenges ahead, activists are still pushing for ways to expand reproductive rights.
Oregon announced on June 24 that it has joined a multi-state commitment with Washington and California to “defend access to reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, and committed to protecting patients and doctors against efforts by other states to enforce their abortion bans in our states.”
In the same statement, Gov. Kate Brown said, “Abortion is health care, and no matter who you are or where you come from, Oregon doesn’t turn away anyone seeking health care. Period.”
Students for Choice hopes to pressure UO into expanding its reproductive health services when students return to campus in the fall. While UO president Michael Schill released a brief statement in support of abortion rights, Lucy and Warren said that the university’s support isn’t going far enough; abortion services should be expanded and listed more clearly on the University Health Center’s website.
“I think the health center is a great resource for students … but they can only see so many patients. And if you did need to seek abortion care, you would have to go elsewhere, which is a huge financial burden and inaccessible to students,” Lucy said. “We’re not handing them resources, either –– they’re having to seek them out.”
Byers said she hopes to expand the reach of the NWAAF in the coming years. She said because abortion rights are such an intersectional issue, abortion funds will have to be flexible about when and how they choose to use their money.
“Of course we pay for like, abortion, lodging and transportation, but depending on the case, we could pay for a lot of other barriers too,” Byers said. “For example, somebody needed financial help with their methadone treatment while they were traveling to a different city, and that’s something I asked if we could pay for. And we did … we just really need to try and do everything that we can to accommodate and support people.”
When asked if she had any reason for optimism or hope, Warren was clear.
“I mean, I think we have to, right? If we didn’t, then we wouldn’t be fighting for this movement. I think there were a lot of promises made, especially from the people we elected to power, and I’m hoping they uphold those promises,” she said. “But I don’t think any of that’s going to happen without major social change. Without us there, right now, to create that hope.”
The following resources are available to UO students, Eugene residents and other community members seeking abortion services and support.
The Northwest Abortion Access Fund (866-NWAAF10)
Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon (800-230-PLAN)
UO Students for Choice (@uostudentsforchoice)
