CHICAGO (AP) — College student Maya Roman has the handoff down to a science: a text message, a walk to a designated site, and a paper bag delivered with condoms and Plan B emergency contraception. At DePaul University, it’s the only way students can get a sliver of sexual health support, she said.
DePaul, a Catholic school in Chicago, prohibits distribution of any kind of birth control on its campus.
To get around that, a student group runs a covert contraceptive delivery network called “the womb service.” The group was once the university’s chapter of Planned Parenthood Generation Action, but it has been operating off campus since DePaul in June revoked its status as a student organization.
At Catholic universities, which generally do not offer contraceptives on their campuses or at school-run health centers, student groups have stepped in to fill what they see as gaps in reproductive health care. It often means navigating pushback from college administrators.
In line with church teachings that discourage premarital sex and birth control, many Catholic colleges restrict access to contraceptives on campus. The student activists say they are providing essential help on campuses that enroll students of all faiths.
At DePaul, the university said it banished the student group over its affiliation with Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. It said it also “reserves the right to restrict the distribution of medical or health supplies/devices items on university premises that it deems to be inappropriate from the perspective of the institution’s mission and values.”
“I was in disbelief,” Roman said of the group being forced to disband. “It was a flood of disappointment.”
Efforts to restrict contraception have mounted around the US
Far beyond college campuses, a growing number of Republican-led states have seen attempts to restrict access to contraception. Some state legislatures have sought to exclude emergency contraception and other birth control methods from state Medicaid programs or have introduced bills requiring parental consent for minors to access contraception.
The Trump administration has also frozen funding to family planning clinics that provide free or low-cost contraception and scrubbed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on birth control from government websites.
Conversely, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, signed legislation in August requiring colleges and universities to offer contraception and abortion medication at on-campus pharmacies and student health centers, but it applies only to public institutions.
“We do see this massive effort to restrict access to contraception and abortion throughout the U.S., not just on Catholic campuses,” said Jill Delston, associate professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied contraception access. “And on Catholic campuses, that may in some ways be amplified.”
Activist groups connect with students just off campus
Roman, an economics student at DePaul, grew up learning about reproductive health from her mother, a nurse. When she arrived on campus, she realized many of her peers had relatively limited sexual health knowledge.