NORTHAMPTON — Three state representatives and college students rode public buses around the state Monday in support of a bill to make medical abortions available at public universities in Massachusetts.
“The best way to explain to people that this is serious,” Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa said, is by “really underscoring the distances” that college students currently must travel to find abortion resources.
Since many students don’t have a car on campus, she explained, these round-trip bus rides can last hours and make students miss classes.
Sabadosa, D-Northampton, said her ride from UMass Amherst to Planned Parenthood in Springfield required her to switch buses twice, with one switch requiring nearly an hour of waiting due to a missed stop. In total, her round-trip ride lasted nearly five hours.
Reps. Jack Lewis and Maria Robinson traveled by bus from Framingham State University to Women’s Health Services in Brookline. This ride alone took them more than three hours, suggesting a round trip lasting twice as long.
“It’s not tenable for students to have to travel so long,” said Rebecca Hart Holder, the exective director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, a grassroots advocacy group that helped coordinate Monday’s event.
“Most college students rely on their campus health center,” she said. Therefore, she said, it makes sense for medication abortion care to be more accessible to students right on campus.
This is the goal of bill H2399/S1470, a piece of legislation inspired by a similar California bill that Sabadosa updated for Massachusetts.
If passed, the bill would create a fund to offer public universities money to cover costs associated with facility upgrades, security upgrades, and the cost of equipment and training for staff related to medical abortions.
Sabadosa explained that a medical abortion is a noninvasive procedure that consists of ingesting two pills and is “extremely effective” and “extremely safe.”
Shannon Craig, a UMass Amherst senior currently interning with Sabadosa, said the bill “would make all the difference.”
Craig said she knows many students on campus who have sought out abortions in the past and were met with “tedious obstacles that could definitely be avoided,” such as lengthy bus rides.
Also, she said, “there’s a lot of stigma around medical abortions,” and she hopes that utilizing on-campus health services will increase privacy and protection for abortion-seekers.
Hart Holder brought up the abortion rights case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to hear on Dec. 1 this year.
“We’re seeing a profound threat to reproductive freedom on the national level,” she said, emphasizing the importance of this state legislation.
Sabadosa, along with other lawmakers, announced that a virtual hearing was scheduled Tuesday for the Medicare for All bill titled “An Act Establishing Medicare for All in Massachusetts,” to be heard by the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing.
“The pandemic has made it clear that while we spend a lot on health care, that does not translate into good health,” Sabadosa said.
Insisting that more substantial change is needed, she said, “I think we are kind of nibbling away at this issue in Massachusetts. Medicare for All removes the bureaucracy, cuts out the middleman, and allows us to invest in social determinants of health.”