After a new law went into effect last year requiring public universities to provide medication abortions to students, UCLA student Winnie Xu wanted to help spread the word.
Xu, a statistics and political science major, co-founded Preserve Abortion Access: California Task Force. She and other students, along with professors on the Westwood campus, said they wanted to make sure people understood the medication was available to them, free of charge.
So several of them organized an abortion “teach-in” — held last April, billed as an interactive event during which the participants would learn about “the medical, legal, and social landscape of abortion care in the U.S.”
In the absence of more consistent messaging from campus administrators, students like Xu said they felt a need to step in to inform other students about their rights.
“We wanted to essentially remind individuals that abortion and reproductive health and sexual health is more than just something that is contentious with politics,” said Xu, now a sophomore at the university.
About 80 students attended that April teach-in.
Paula Tavrow, an adjunct professor in UCLA’s School of Public Health who helped organize the event, had hoped for more turnout.
“I think that in part, in California we are a bit complacent,” Tavrow said. “After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, nothing happened.”
That decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 2022 Dobbs case, made abortion a state-by-state issue. Tavrow thinks many Californians didn’t feel they had to rally to protect access to abortion; California’s lawmakers were racing to pass laws protecting access, rather than limit it, as happened in other states’ legislatures.
Gov. Gavin Newsom had already signed Senate Bill 24 in 2019. The law requires all of the state’s 33 public universities to provide access to abortion pills to students who want them. The law took effect in 2023.
An LAist investigation, published in January, found that many University of California and California State University campuses had failed to notify students about the new law a year after it was implemented. The schools may have followed the letter of the law, but SB 24’s co-author, former state senator Connie Leyva, told LAist that implementation has been “falling short.”
Medication abortion uses a combination of two federally approved drugs to end a pregnancy. It does not require a surgical procedure.
The first pill is mifepristone, which blocks a hormone known as progesterone that the body needs for a pregnancy to continue. The second drug, misoprostol, is taken 24 to 48 hours later. It causes cramping and bleeding and empties the uterus.
Since the Food and Drug Administration first approved medication abortion in 2000, its use in the United States has grown quickly. Medication abortion is highly effective and in 2021 was used in more than half of abortions in the U.S. The FDA has approved the two-drug regimen for pregnancies up to 10 weeks.
Among the 10 University of California campuses, UCLA was one of eight that mentioned medication abortion on their health center websites as of January. UCLA’s website offers a comprehensive overview of the medication abortion process. It includes a statement about access to health services, a breakdown of what to expect, and resources, including how to address emotional support.
Xu said she wanted to see “how we can use UCLA as a blueprint to essentially set a standard of care for all UCs and CSUs.”
Other campuses that did provide information to students did so to varying degrees.
Cal State Fullerton’s website lists medication abortion as a service provided, and offers a process timeline, an FAQ, and links to additional information about abortion and abortion pills. Cal State Northridge lists medication abortion as a service provided and links to the law, but there are no additional resources or descriptions of the steps as other campuses did.
Until recently, nearly half of California State University campus clinics did not have any information about medication abortion on their clinic websites, nor did they list it as a service offered. Since LAist published its investigation, Cal State Long Beach, CSU Channel Islands, Sacramento State and Sonoma State updated their student health center websites. Cal State San Bernardino updated its website after LAist reached out in its initial reporting.
UC Merced and UC Santa Cruz did not list medication abortion on their health center websites. Spokespersons for these two campuses said information about medication abortion is disseminated in other ways, such as fliers and in-person meetings. UC Santa Cruz also updated its website after LAist's investigation published.
Some students and faculty noted that static information on a website might not be enough to get the message across to students — particularly those who are dealing with the stress and fear that can come with an unwanted pregnancy.
“When you’re in a state of panic and anxiety and trauma, it’s incredibly hard to navigate a webpage, especially on your own,” said Shayda Kafai, a professor of ethnic and women’s studies at Cal Poly Pomona.
Kafai praised the faculty and cultural centers at the university for doing their part to get information to students. She said the campus newspaper, The Poly Post, did a good job of reporting on medication abortion when it was implemented.
“But if it’s shared minimally [by administration] and we don’t have access to the information, it creates a real challenge,” Kafai said.
Some student groups have been pushing administrators for months for more transparency regarding medication abortions. The nonprofit Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity (URGE) has chapters at many California campuses, said Faith Chinnapong, the organization’s senior California organizer.
Chinnapong credited chapter members with creating student advisory committees to better center the student voice, “as well as creating student spaces to learn about medication abortion and its availability on campus since campuses haven't been providing that information themselves.”
URGE doesn’t have chapters at every campus, and Chinnapong said progress depended on each administration. Some, like Cal Poly Humboldt, are open to student opinions, they said, while many are not.
Reflecting on the teach-in at UCLA, Xu said recently that she wanted to help “educate students on what Senate Bill 24 was, and what we were hoping to see in terms of Senate Bill 24's implementation.”
The event, held in an auditorium near student housing, featured presentations from the director of UCLA’s student health center, public health researchers, and students. They spoke on a range of topics including the basics of an abortion to “how monumental Senate Bill 24 was,” Xu said.
Organizers said the teach-in was a collaboration among several partners, including the Fielding School of Public Health, the law school’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy, UCLA Medical Students for Choice, and Preserve Abortion Access: California Task Force.
Xu said she is helping to plan another teach-in at UCLA this year, and hopes for higher attendance. She is considering partnering with another university and training students to get the information to students one on one instead of trying to bring students to one event.
Tavrow, the UCLA public health professor, said there are limits to what student groups can do to disseminate information, compared to university administrators who have much greater reach. One example of that, she said, was the stream of emails sent from administrators to students at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Why couldn’t a similar email go out every year about sexual and reproductive health services?” Tavrow said.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block sent an all campus email about abortion access in June 2022 after the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Dobbs.
That message said UCLA would advocate to protect students’ access to affordable health care and that UCLA was working to begin offering medication abortion on campus.
However, during a visit to the public lobbies of UCLA’s student health center, the Ashe Center, LAist did not see any information posted about medication abortion and staff said they did not have any to hand out.
“[T]he Ashe Center is always looking for ways to enhance outreach to students about its services,” said UCLA spokesperson Ricardo Vazquez via email, “and welcomes feedback and input from individual students and student groups.”
