In February 1981, a senior living in Lowell House walked into the university’s infirmary holding a positive pregnancy test. She had been having protected sex with a long-term boyfriend, but her contraceptive pills had failed.
“I remember being totally freaked out,” said the alumna, who wished to remain anonymous. She was not ready to have a baby. But she did not feel desperate. An abortion was the obvious course of action—no question about it. Health services referred her to a clinic in Boston. She and her boyfriend drove to the appointment. The procedure went smoothly. “I have never regretted it,” she said. “I’ve never thought a second time about it.”
Eight years prior, Roe v. Wade granted women in Massachusetts, and nationally, access to legal abortions. Over the last fifty years, the state has steadily expanded abortion protections, with recent legislation mandating that insurance companies cover access. That is not the case across the nation.
When the Supreme Court’s draft decision overturning Roe leaked last spring, Anna Dean ’25 found that “being at school was hard. It was really hard.” Dean recalled conversations in Annenberg with indifferent peers: “People were like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s tough, but like, I live in a good state, right?’” That weekend, Dean went home to Arkansas to find her town postered with statements celebrating the end of Roe.
After the formal decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June, Arkansas was one of 12 states that enacted “trigger laws”—bills pre-written to ban abortions when Roe no longer applied. Mathilde Fox-Smith ’25, who grew up in Louisiana where one such ban exists, explained Dobbs did not change her day-to-day life at home or school, but she was still emotional: “It was like a light going out.”
Even before Dobbs, women across the country had restricted abortion access. Dr. Cheryl Hamlin, an OB-GYN at Mount Auburn in Cambridge, has spent the last five years commuting to Missisippi to perform abortions at Jackson Women’s Health, dubbed “the Pink House”—the red-bricked clinic at the heart of Dobbs. She said when Dobbs was leaked, no one was surprised. “We all just gave each other a hug and got back to work.”
The Pink House was the last clinic to close in Mississippi before the state’s trigger ban went into motion. Through her last day providing abortions, patients were “coming out of the woodwork,” Hamlin said. “I was definitely cutting corners. Giving people meds that I might not have otherwise. Like, ‘take this, call your doctor if it doesn’t work.’ That’s all I could do.”
When the clinic shut its doors, people were crying. “It was hard to just get on a plane and go home.”
Hamlin said people in Massachussetts do not realize the nationwide picture of abortion access. Recently, she recalled a patient in Attleboro who got annoyed waiting for her abortion: “She was all huffy, like, ‘You made me wait too long. I’m leaving.’ I just thought, ‘You have no idea. You clearly don’t get it.’ This wouldn’t happen in Jackson. No one would ever leave an abortion.”
Dean was also at the Pink House when it closed. She spent the summer researching domestic violence in the Mississippi Delta, and spoke with patients who received abortions for pregnancies from incest, for which Missisippi’s ban does not make an exception. She stressed how difficult it is for women in the South to access abortions. “Women in poverty and women of color are going to be sought out to be persecuted, not necessarily a Harvard student,” Dean said.
Students are confused as to how Dobbs may affect them. Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) released a statement on June 24th reiterating their commitment to reproductive health care. Yet the case law is confusing. “What happens when you seek abortion care in your college town and then come back to the state where it’s outlawed?” said Dean.
Professor Mary Ziegler ’04, UC Davis Law professor and Roe historian, emphasized this legal ambiguity. “I think part of what’s tricky as people navigate this landscape is they don’t know what the law is going to be. They don’t know whether things that would be okay at one moment in time won’t be later,” she said.
“I feel safe as of right now,” said Liz Benecchi ’25 from her home in Georgia, where abortions are only legal in the first six weeks of pregnancy—before most women know they are pregnant. Benecchi underscored her privilege, but stressed the uncertainty she feels. “Who knows? Who knows, in five years, if that changes? Who knows what they can legislate and what they can’t? You know, I don’t know.”
Ziegler said students living between states may be better protected than individuals who travel out-of-state solely for abortions. But she urged that even in Massachusetts, students are not untouchable.
“The message, in part, of the Dobbs decision is that something that would have been legally or politically unthinkable two years ago happened,” she said. “I think that the lesson there is that you can’t take rights for granted.”
Hamlin criticized complacency in Massachusetts, particularly in the “double bubble” of Cambridge. “There’s a growing storm of people that want to make [abortion] illegal in the whole country,” she explained. “I think people just need to be aware that we can’t just sit back like we’re fine. I don’t think we are.”
Differing perspectives exist on Harvard’s campus, too. After Dobbs leaked, both pro-choice and pro-life groups held rallies outside Harvard Hall. In 2019, Harvard Right to Life, a pro-life student group, called for HUHS to refund the abortion costs on students’ health insurance plans. Harvard Right to Life did not respond to requests for comment.
Ziegler said when she studied at Harvard in the early 2000s, there was greater apathy around abortion on both sides. The alumna from Lowell agreed, saying it was a “non-issue.” “I’m very freaked out, like all women nowadays, at the thought that this could become a whole thing,” she said.
Ziegler said access to contraception and same-sex marriage and intimacy will likely be threatened in the future. She also urged students, particularly those from conservative states, to protect their personal data. “Students in places like Massachusetts are thinking that when they’re in Massachusetts, it’s okay. But their data could be scrutinized when they’re in Massachusetts, too,” she said. “Go online now and read about digital privacy.”
Students and alumni maintain hope. Janet Singer ’84 is a founding member of Midwives for Choice and Crimson Goes Blue, a coalition of Harvard alumni mobilizing to elect Democrats. Singer said she is optimistic about the future. She explained that young people do not see “the full arc of history”—when she was a student, gay marriage seemed impossible—but that they have to have hope. “If you don’t have any hope, you just can’t work on what we need to work on, and you don’t see a way for things to get better.”
Benecchi maintains that with “constant action,” change will happen. She emphasized voting in local elections, flagging offices like attorney general, who enforces laws at a state level. “I don’t think we’re stuck here.”
Dean is committed to working in the South. “No one’s coming to save us,” she said. “No one from Boston is coming to Arkansas to try to fix abortion legislation. That’s our job.”
As long as women need abortions, Hamlin will keep fighting. The Pink House recently moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where she’s helping get the clinic running. Since Dobbs, she has also seen more women seeking out-of-state abortions in Boston.
“I never thought that this was going to be where my life was headed,” she said, reflecting on the past few years. “Until I feel like the country is turned around and they don’t need me anymore, I think I’m in it for the duration. And even if I’m a little old lady, I can still write prescriptions for abortion pills.”
Proof Schubert Reed ’25 (proofschubertreed@college.harvard.edu) is a sophomore living in Pforzheimer House.