Reports surfaced last week that the University of Oregon will begin offering the abortion pill to students directly from its on-campus health center in the fall of 2026. The college became the latest in a succession of universities that have recently begun offering the drug on campus, which experts say poses extreme physical and mental health dangers to women and increases the chances of them being coerced into aborting their babies.
As reported by Live Action on Monday, the University of Oregon’s University Health Services (UHS) has decided to begin supplying the chemical abortion regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol to students on campus after an extended pressure campaign conducted by a coalition of leftist student organizations, including the Young Democratic Socialists of America. During an interview, UHS Director Margaret Trout admitted that the university initially did not want to offer the abortion pill because UHS was not able to carry out surgical abortions if the chemical abortion failed.
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But eventually, the student organizations’ pressure campaign worked, and UHS changed its mind. Associated Students of the University of Oregon (ASUO) President Prissila Moreno, who led the campaign, called the decision a “huge win for student power.” The cost of the abortion pill will be fully covered for students who have health insurance in the state due to Oregon’s Reproductive Health Equity Act, which mandates all state health insurance providers to cover 100% of abortion costs.
As observed by Live Action’s Carole Novielli, “Already facing financial and educational pressures as well as potential pressure from parents or the baby’s father, having the abortion 100% paid for adds an additional push to have an abortion that the student may not want.”
The University of Oregon joins a rapidly expanding list of colleges across the country that are now supplying the abortion drug to students on campus. California became the first state to pioneer the practice, passing a measure that took effect in January 2023 that requires all 33 public universities in the state to dispense abortion pills. Other universities that supply chemical abortion to students include the University of Illinois Chicago, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Portland State University.
The development comes amid a legal battle currently raging between pro-life states and the Trump administration over its decision not to enforce a federal law that prohibits the distribution of abortion pills through the mail and its reluctance to reverse Biden-era moves that stripped away safeguards that regulated the drug’s dispensation.
Pro-life advocates like Global Life Campaign Founder Thomas Jacobson say that there are a multitude of serious consequences that will occur as a result of the federal government allowing the abortion drug to spread.
[T]here’s enormous efforts to unleash the abortion pill upon our nation without thinking, without really dealing with the consequences,” he emphasized during “Washington Watch” Tuesday. “… One is deception. You have health care workers and women thinking that they’re doing a good thing, but not really realizing they’re killing a baby. Then you’ve got lawlessness going on — this rebellion against the good sound laws is fomenting lawlessness in our land, which is very, very, very dangerous for the future of our nation and the ability for us to maintain peace and order within our own borders here. But also, … I think some of the impacts that get lost [are the effects] on the women who are pregnant, [the] mothers and the dads of those babies [at] universities, like in Oregon.”
Mary Szoch, who serves as director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, further underscored the dangers and injustices that universities are unleashing by supplying the abortion drug to students.
“Schools like the University of Oregon should recognize that dispensing the abortion pill on campus is the same as pressuring a woman to have an abortion,” she told The Washington Stand. “It’s an act that is complicit in not only taking the life of and completely denying the dignity of an unborn child, but also, one that tells female students they must surrender their ability to be a mom in order to graduate. Colleges that engage in this are effectively telling students this school is one where being a woman is considered a burden, and becoming a mom is considered a failure.”
“Equally as bad is that as these colleges send this perverse message, they are putting women’s lives at risk — leaving them alone, likely in their door room, to deal with the trauma of delivering what may be their visibly recognizable dead child, while assessing whether the excruciating pain and immense bleeding they are experiencing is a ‘normal’ part of a mifepristone abortion or a life threatening emergency,” Szoch added. “That’s not the college experience women want, and women should take a stand by boycotting the University of Oregon and any other college that clearly doesn’t value the dignity of every person.”
LifeNews Note: Dan Hart writes for the Family Research Council. He is the senior editor of The Washington Stand.
