However, students in the Cal State system — and those who waive the insurance requirement at UC — will have to pay to receive the medications. California State University, Sacramento expects the cost of medications would be between $60 and $80.
“There’s still a lot of areas where abortion access maybe is less than perfect or varies between different campuses and surrounding communities, or for different students within those communities,” said Alex Niles, chair of government relations for the UC Student Association. “Reproductive health care access, in general, has to be central and fully accessible.”
To meet the January 1 deadline, Cal State and UC campuses that don't currently provide medication abortion access — including UC San Diego, UC Davis and UC Riverside — will have to train providers and update information on websites so students know the service is available. The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed some of that preparation, said Annie Sumberg, senior director of medication abortion access for Essential Access Health, a reproductive health advocacy and consulting group that is helping campuses gear up and offering Zoom training sessions for campus providers.
Several campuses also said they are considering offering telehealth appointments for medication abortion and allowing students to pick up pills at pharmacies closer to their homes.
The FDA approved having abortion medications sent by mail in 2021, and demand for telehealth has grown during the pandemic.
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s assistant vice president for health and wellbeing, Tina Hadaway-Mellis, also raised the possibility of having prescriptions mailed to students. Increased access to telehealth, she said, has been one of “very few silver linings as a result of the pandemic.”
“If [students] prefer to be someplace that offers them a sense of privacy, or if they don’t live very close to campus, if they’re only coming to campus one or two days a week, but they live an hour away, a telehealth appointment would be much more approachable and convenient,” Hadaway-Mellis said.
UC Berkeley has been offering medication abortions at its Tang Center since the fall of 2020, with students often able to get same-day appointments, according to University Health Services spokesperson Tami Cate, who said 34 medication abortions have so far been provided.
Currently, UC Berkeley administers medication abortions only on site, but it might add telehealth options in the future, she said.
Directing students toward campus medical centers is particularly important, abortion-rights activists say, because California is expecting a surge of people seeking abortions from states where it is now illegal.
UCLA’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy expects the influx could be as large as some 16,000 people each year.
There also are several regions throughout the state where abortions are already difficult to access. These “abortion deserts” are especially concentrated in California’s Central Valley, said Larissa Mercado-López, Fresno State University chair of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
“We have large swaths of land without abortion providers or even comprehensive reproductive health clinics,” Mercado-López said.
Forty percent of California’s counties do not currently have an abortion provider, accounting for about 3% of the state's child-bearing population. according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and advocacy organization. There are several Cal State and UC campuses located in these areas, including those in Bakersfield, Fullerton and Stanislaus, said Cohen, the UCLA reproductive rights expert.
Raising awareness
Regardless of how far individual campuses have come in implementing the new law, advocates stress the importance of raising awareness of abortion services at student health centers.
“It’s not well advertised,” said Esmeralda Quintero-Cubillan, president of the UC Student Association. “Most students, if you were to ask them, would not know we offered medicated abortions or that you could pursue reproductive health care services.”
Many anti-abortion-rights groups, including the California Family Council, opposed the state bill requiring public universities to provide medication abortion, but none of them returned CalMatters’ requests for comment.
Abortion-rights activists say they are gearing up to educate campus communities about the availability of medication abortion. URGE, a group that organizes young people to support reproductive rights, is giving presentations on medication abortion to gender studies classes on various campuses and to students pursuing health-related careers.
The presentations highlight the safety of medication abortions, introduce audiences to the new law and provide an overview of the reproductive justice movement, said Callie Flores, a student at UC Merced who sits on the group’s student advisory board. The board also conducts anonymous surveys that ask students for input on what their campuses should be doing to support abortion access, and shares the results with campus health centers.
“We try to push that, you know, being abortion-positive means that there’s no shame, no stigma and no apologies connected to getting the abortion,” Flores said. “Abortion isn’t a bad word. It’s not a bad decision. It’s a decision that people make for themselves, and it’s totally valid.”
After reeling from the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, Flores said activism has given her a sense of purpose and made her feel like she’s making a difference.