Students at Connecticut’s public universities say their campuses are at the national forefront of reproductive health care — but there’s still work to be done.
University health care experts and students were at the state capitol on Wednesday to talk about how their schools were supporting reproductive health care, especially after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
They highlighted a law passed last year that mandated the state’s public college campuses to provide reproductive health services.
“This issue came up as we were discussing the reproductive freedom bill, and I started getting calls to our office from students at UConn and on other college campuses, and so that's how the legislation that we're here to discuss today came to us,” Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said at the beginning of the program.
Students from UConn Stamford, Hartford and Storrs, as well as Trinity and Yale, spoke about what their schools were doing right and what they could be doing better.
They highlighted dedicated health center staff, increased outreach and extended services. But they also said access to health care differs, sometimes in the same university system, by what campus you’re on.
Anaya Mehta, a graduate student at UConn Hartford, said she had access to more reproductive health care options as an undergrad student at UConn Storrs than in Stamford.
“There's not equal access to reproductive health, which is why I think it's important that people are advocating for it,” Mehta said. “And one thing that I always say is that you can't study, you can't go to work, you can't go to class if you are not getting the care that you need.”
Dr. Joan Gigstad is with UConn’s health center. She said the center can provide Plan B emergency contraceptives and birth control, but it needs better space to expand its services.
“Our current physical location on campus is very much outdated, and we really need a better, expanded building in order to provide the services that we would like for our students,” Gigstad said. “That's been our major obstacle to providing the services that we want.”
The students also said they were looking forward to vending machines with contraceptives being placed on campus.
The state passed a law allowing them last session. The Regulation Review Committee is expected to release guidelines on the machines later this month.
“Anyway that we can expand access to emergency contraception and really to all reproductive and sexual health care products in an informal way, and also just in a way that's protecting people's dignity, and for young people to feel empowered that, ‘yes, I have control, yes, I know what I'm doing, and this is just another part of my day.’ There's no stigma, no shame,” Nimisha Srikanth said, a graduate student at Yale.
Other student suggestions included using gender-neutral language when discussing reproductive health to avoid alienating students, supporting student parents, and continuing to improve communication about available resources.
