Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the national spotlight has settled on Republican-controlled states that have restricted access to abortion or enacted total bans. But as the Planned Parenthood Action group at Tufts, formerly known as Tufts Students for National Abortion Rights Action League, will tell you, there is more work to be done to protect and advocate for reproductive health and rights, especially on college campuses and even in the most liberal states.
PPA is a registered chapter of Planned Parenthood Generation Action, an initiative with over a dozen chapters at colleges and universities across Massachusetts. Jon Marx, western Massachusetts organizer for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, weighed in.
“What we do is we encourage young activists and organizers on campuses to organize on issues like sexual reproductive health care, reproductive justice [and] reproductive rights,” Marx said. “We strongly encourage them to get organized and activated in their communities. We give them the tools and resources to do that.”
PPLM utilizes Generation Action to connect with college students, who the organization recognizes as historically vital in advocacy work.
“College students have always been critical to this work,” Marx said. “They are some of our most passionate and engaged activists. They have so much energy that they pour into making the world a better place. It only makes sense to support them however we can.”
Tufts’ PPA chapter is no exception. Club president Sabrina Rangwani has been involved in pro-choice advocacy long before she arrived at Tufts.
“I grew up in Texas, and my mom has always been very involved in pro-choice activism. But knowing that it’s not a guaranteed right for a lot of people really just makes me angry,” Rangwani said. “This club has given me an outlet for that.”
In the future, Rangwani hopes to become an abortion provider herself. But before she can enter the medical world, Rangwani is making a difference through PPA’s ongoing initiatives. First, the club is tackling the task of educating students about how they can influence abortion policy through their vote this fall.
“[We are] working to make sure that students understand who pro-choice candidates are, both locally and in their home states, since a lot of Tufts students use their home voter IDs,” Rangwani said.
While voters in states with abortion bans and restrictions on the books face the most urgency on the ballot this fall, members of PPA believe that residents of Democratic-leaning states have a responsibility to increase their own capacity and advocacy to help the millions of Americans that can no longer receive treatment in their home state.
“At home in Seattle, I work at an abortion clinic,” sophomore Katie Nelson, who is on the executive board of PPA, said. “It’s so critical that especially being in a state like Massachusetts, or my home state of Washington, that we do all we can to ensure everyone has access and … know that they have access to this care.”
However, ensuring continued access even in Democratic-leaning states requires a demanding workload to keep up with an increase in new patients.
“We should pour resources into liberal states because we know we’re having an influx of out of state patients,” Nelson said. “Especially [in] the clinic that I work at in Washington, I would say a majority of the patients we see are coming from Texas [or] they’re coming from out of state. It’s really important that we make sure that these liberal states with access to abortion are able to handle seeing their own residents, but also seeing more than just people that live in their own state.”
While Democratic-leaning states like Massachusetts are revered for codifying abortion access into state law, there is also more the state can do to protect the reproductive health rights of the state’s residents.
“There are a few states that are doing a little bit better,” Rangwani said. “In an ideal world, we would be working towards getting Massachusetts on the level of those states.”
Massachusetts only allows legal abortions up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy, and later abortions are only allowed in cases of fatal fetal anomalies or to preserve the physical or mental health of a pregnant person. In contrast, in states like Colorado, Oregon and Vermont, abortion is not restricted based on any gestational duration.
“We also want to make sure that local candidates are prioritizing abortion work and making sure that things like clinics are protected from protesters,” Rangwani said.
Another priority for PPA is focusing on raising awareness for the reality of abortion access at Tufts. “There aren’t really any clinics in Medford and Somerville, so the closest one would be Planned Parenthood and it’s around an hour to an hour and a half [away] on the Green Line, which isn’t often great for college students,” Rangwani said.
There are other obstacles to care beyond the commute, including anti-abortion centers, which currently outnumber abortion providers in Massachusetts by more than 2-to-1.
PPA has used Instagram as a way to warn Tufts students about the centers and ensure they are aware of all the resources available to them.
“We basically just talked about, ‘If you are pregnant and want resources, this is where not to go, and this is where you should go instead,’” Rangwani said.
Aside from online infographics, PPA also works to host educational events to promote better sexual education programs in the state.
“We’re working with Project [Spreading Health Access, Resources, and Education] to put on an event on abortion safety, through a global perspective and talking about how abortion access can differ across the world and what that means for people who need to access abortions,” Rangwani said.
These events aim to raise awareness and shift how the public frames their thinking about abortion access.
“We’d also like to do an educational event on why reproductive justice is an issue for everyone,” Rangwani said. “Because something that we’ve noticed is a lot of mostly male students kind of take abortion rights for granted and think well oh, ‘This doesn't directly affect me.’ But what people don’t realize is that men actually do benefit from abortion.”
To prove this, Rangwani hopes to shift the conversation towards its impacts on the world at large.
“There are so many things that abortion has helped contribute to this country and I think it’s really important that people see it as something rather than just like a person-to-person issue and see it as something that impacts our society on a larger scale,” she said.
The club’s partnership with Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts is designed to help them achieve these goals and help amplify the group’s voice to decision-makers.
“Part of the reason why we joined Planned Parenthood Action is that we’re able to campaign with them to talk to certain candidates about what we as college students and pro-choice voters would like to see as changes for abortion measures,” Rangwani said. “Recently, [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.] met with the CEO of Planned Parenthood Massachusetts … to talk about changes that we’d like to see on a local level.”
One Planned Parenthood-supported initiative that has yet to make its way to Tufts is on-campus abortion care. Caroline Kimball-Katz (LA’15), director of communications and marketing at PPLM, shared her thoughts.
“Some campuses have been able to start providing medication abortion on campus,” Kimball-Katz said. “There is a requirement now for public colleges and universities to provide either medication abortion services at their campus health center or be able to provide a referral to a licensed reproductive health care provider. It’s a different ballgame for private colleges, but some are pursuing that on their own which is really exciting to see.”
PPA is navigating the process of advocating for medication abortion to be available to Tufts students right on campus.
“We’ve also been talking to [Tufts Health Service] about integrating that kind of program … at Tufts so that students are able to access those medications on campus,” Rangwani said.
Tufts Health Service does not currently provide abortion services to students, but that could change in the near future.
“An option for medication abortion is currently under consideration, and more information will be provided to students when appropriate,” wrote Patrick Collins, the executive director of media relations at Tufts, in an email to the Daily.
While some of PPA’s initiatives may seem daunting, there is an easy change that everyone can implement with ease into their daily lives: remove the taboo around abortions and reproductive care.
“More than likely, you know someone who has had an abortion,” Rangwani said. “And I think that it should be something that we openly talk about and [view] as normal in our society because statistically, it is normal.”
