Questions parents ask prospective colleges in a post-Dobbs world
Do you give merit aid? Do you guarantee housing? How's the food? Will my daughter's uterus become property of the state?
Sage sat on my bed last night, the news playing quietly in the background as we caught up on her day, the Senior year school drama, the surprise test, that one kid who did that one weird thing.
I looked over at the TV in time to see Amber Nicole Thurman’s beautiful face staring back at me.
“We’ve got to talk about this,” I said, my voice breaking. It had weighed so heavily on me all day.
“I know,” she said.
“I mean, we’ve talked about it a bit — but you know…”
“I know. The red states.”
She knows.
“Georgia,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s bad.”
One of the colleges she was most excited to learn more about is in Georgia.
My youngest daughter has officially reached that scary-exciting (my kids call the feeling anxcitement) milestone known as college application season.
She’s honing her list, diving deeper into the majors, trying to assess “the vibes,” ranking her favorites, searching for scholarships, and working through those dreaded essays.
If you haven’t been through the college search yet, there are lots of fun online college match questionnaires to help you create a balanced list. They probe into preferences like, how big a student body do you want? Intended major? Greek life? Co-ed? HBCU? Clubs and organizations? Religious affiliation? Party school?
The questionnaires have modernized so much since I was going through this process when the most helpful guide was Lisa Birnbach’s College Book, which cheekily ranked schools by categories like Most Promiscuous and let us know where you could get the best pizza.
Today, you can click a checkbox or slide a button to register the importance of diversity, mental health services, accessibility for students with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ friendliness.
Last year, more parents fearfully started to ask about the safety of their Jewish or Muslim students on campus.
Now there’s one more: We have to consider what access to birth control and reproductive health care looks like in each state.
“So how much do you really love this school? Because, I mean, Atlanta is so cool and all. But…”
“I’m not married to it,” she shrugged. I was surprised how quickly she answered. I should have known she’d already done the thinking and had these discussions with her friends.
“It’s just that, should you ever, I mean….”
“I know,” she said. “I’m just going to take it off my list. It’s okay. I mean, if I’m at a party and something happens…”
“Yes! I mean, God forbid! But…”
“…but it could happen,” she said, her eyes wide. “It does happen. I know people it’s happened to.”
Then she told me a story about being with some guys she didn’t know well, and throwing away an open cup of hers on a table after realizing she had turned away from it too long. It wasn’t booze. It wasn’t even at a party.
This is the world we are living in.
Parents have the sex talk. The tech talk. The traffic stop talk. The don’t send nudes talk. The drinking and driving talk. The active shooter talk. The roofie talk.
Now we’re having the “don’t use an online period tracker” talk and the “I will get you whatever you need if you ever need it” talk.
“I mean, what if you had a boyfriend and…you know. You should be able to get Plan B without traveling out of state. It’s not a big deal, it’s just a pill.”
“Low-key, yeah.”
“It’s healthcare,” I said. I found myself getting upset again. “It’s just healthcare. How are we taking healthcare away from women? How are we doing this?”
“It’s really messed up,” she said.
I started to cry and I hugged her.
I let her know that I wish I had all the money in the world to send her to any school she wants. I wish we had the leadership in our country that would make every single state open to her. I assured her that while I have my feelings, the college she attends is her decision to make, and if she really wants to consider schools in Georgia or Louisiana, she could.
But still.
We scrolled our phones together, and at her request added more colleges from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont to her list.
My daughter will have choices; we are safely ensconced in a great big comforting pillow of blue (though I remain vigilant knowing national laws could change with the results of this year’s election). But I can’t stop thinking about students in states like Indiana, Texas, Idaho, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee, should they be faced with an unwanted or life-threatening pregnancy.
I can’t stop thinking about those students with fewer choices than my kids have, the ones whose best options for higher education (or work or housing) are in states that don’t support their access to the same basic reproductive healthcare available in the majority of countries around the world — whether or not they’re on the verge of death, bleeding out in a hospital bed with doctors too fearful of long prison sentences to provide the care they desperately want to give.
I can’t stop thinking about Black and brown women who are disproportionately affected by draconian laws regulating women’s bodies that now, when used as directed, officially cause death.
I turn back to the TV: Another photo of Amber Nicole Thurman, youthful and vibrant, smiling with her 6-year-old son, a whole incredible life ahead of her.
“My God,” I shook my head.
“What have we done?”
When I vote in November for Kamala Harris and every progressive down-ballot candidate, I will do it because she can’t. And I will do it so that women in Georgia and Idaho and Texas and North Dakota and South Dakota and Utah, Arizona, Nebraska Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Florida, South Carolina, and West Virginia won’t have to meet the same completely preventable doom.
This election isn’t just about Amber Thurman. Every day of my lucky, breathing life is about Amber Thurman. Because the only thing that separates us, is one of us bled out under the right Supreme Court.
Illustration; Laboratoires Servier, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Your message is so profund and real .. as a grandparent it brings tears to my eyes .. as I realize that the fears and issues you bring out are all real .. and none of them should be .. hang in there .. and get everyone around you to vote for Kamala ..
WE haven't done. It is being done to us and we all need to vote to ensure that ALL women, current and future, have bodily autonomy.
I have heard that the universities in the anti abortion states, even if they are a bubble of blue in a sea of red, are seeing a downturn in applications from people who can get pregnant. At least, there is still the "power of the purse".