Officials responded to a reproductive justice student group’s demands to make abortion pills available in the Student Health Center by reiterating the sexual health services the center does provide.
Dean of Students Colette Coleman emphasized the current services the SHC provides in response to the requests and petition GW Reproductive Autonomy and Gender Equity created last month — which demanded officials offer abortion pills in the SHC — in an email obtained by The Hatchet Tuesday. The petition has since garnered more than 820 signatures from students, faculty, parents and alumni.
In her email, Coleman said the SHC currently provides prescriptions for contraceptive pills, rings, patches, injections and emergency contraception “at little to no cost” to students. She said the SHC recently added a gynecological health specialist to expand their primary care services.
She said the SHC is supposed to defer students to local providers who specialize in obstetrics for pregnancy care which includes “expectant management” and medical and surgical “termination of pregnancy,” but did not directly say if officials were rejecting RAGE’s request.
“SHC is meant to be a primary care practice that refers to specialists when necessary,” Coleman said in the email to RAGE.
The email deferred questions to Rebekka Christie, the medical director of the SHC, for further inquiry about the offerings in the SHC. Coleman did not specify in the email whether officials would start providing or were considering providing abortion pills in the SHC.
RAGE responded to Coleman’s email in a statement Thursday that said students deserve “full” access to reproductive health care, which includes abortion services. The statement also condemned her usage of the word “termination” which pegs abortion as a “bad word.”
“Contraception services do not equal abortion services and are not a replacement!” the statement said.
Maddy Niziolek, a second-year graduate student and the co-president of RAGE, said she was disappointed Coleman’s email did not elaborate on why officials did not address their request to offer abortion pills in the SHC. She said she hopes to have a deeper conversation with officials about their hesitancy in providing the service to students.
Niziolek said RAGE decided to send their demands directly to Coleman after University President Ellen Granberg did not respond to the demands they sent in August and Christie rejected their proposal last spring.
She said officials’ continued use of the word “termination” including Coleman’s email, former Interim University President Mark Wrighton’s statement after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson — which overturned federal abortion protections in June 2022 — and the SHC’s website creates a stigma around the word abortion. She also said the term creates confusion among students who may not understand what “termination services” means.
“Using euphemisms like termination services or termination of pregnancy is used to create abortion stigma that impacts students who’ve had abortions and continues to create the idea that sometimes saying the word abortion is bad,” Niziolek said.
She said RAGE sent Coleman a follow-up email clarifying that RAGE is requesting the SHC further expand their services by providing abortion pills. She said they are currently waiting for a response.
“We plan to continue advocating for this until we have medication abortion on GW campus,” Niziolek said. “There really is no reason not to have it.”
