Roe may affect college decisions

Abortion access might play into athletes’ picks

There are a lot of things athletes need to consider when deciding where to go to school. The coaching staff and its record of success. Academic programs. Campus life.

A state’s laws on reproductive rights are likely to soon join that list.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, as it’s expected to do in the coming weeks, female athletes should know that their ability to decide what is best for them and their bodies will depend on where they go to school.

This isn’t a trivial consideration, like which school has the best food or nicest dorms. The ramifications of going to school in a state where abortion is illegal, or one that has imposed such severe restrictions it might as well be, could follow an athlete for the rest of her life.

“My sport was the key to my education, and my education then paved the way to the friendships and the career that I value today,” an unnamed former Division I swimmer said in an amicus brief filed by more than 500 current and former female athletes in the Mississippi case that is likely to lead to the reversal of Roe. “If I became pregnant as a young athlete and was forced to give up my sport for at least nine months, give birth, and then try to juggle being a student athlete and a mother, my entire future would have been derailed.”

For almost 50 years, female athletes have made choices about their lives and athletic careers knowing that they and they alone would decide what to do if faced with an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. That thought might not have been at the forefront of their minds; if we’re being honest, most women who’ve grown up postRoe have taken reproductive rights for granted, not knowing any different and assuming that would always be the case.

The safety net that Roe provided meant women didn’t have to take their right to bodily autonomy into account when deciding where to go to school, where to live or where to work.

That won’t be the case if Roe is overturned.

“It is going to be monumental for people to not have the ability to rely on controlling reproduction,” said Heather Shumaker, director of state abortion access for the National Women’s Law Center. “What that means for the course of your life is going to be huge.”

In other words, compete for, say, UCLA or Illinois and an unplanned pregnancy need not end your career, threaten your health or force you into motherhood before you’re ready. You will decide what to do and, should that choice be to end the pregnancy, you will have options.

Go to a school in Texas, Florida or one of nearly two dozen other states, and your body will no longer be your own.

Want to play professionally or compete at the Olympics? Too bad! Legislators who have done nothing to improve maternal health care or the lives of infants and toddlers will make you carry that pregnancy to term, the impact on your hopes and dreams be damned.

Even if the pregnancy threatens your health, it won’t matter in some states because the (mostly) white men who wrote the laws are so very “pro-life.”

“You think about how many bans are going to pass or be immediate in the South, there’s going to be very little access in the Southern states,” Shumaker said. “Many athletes are on scholarships and are not coming from privileged backgrounds. It seems like it’s going to be insurmountable for people.”

Male athletes who have dismissed abortion rights as somebody else’s issue, or never given them much thought, should realize they’re going to be affected, too.

Say a football player at Alabama gets his girlfriend pregnant while they’re at school. Unless one of them has the means to go out of state for an abortion or can find a way to have one done illegally, that football player can look forward to, at a minimum, paying child support for the next 18 years.

If the woman does have an illegal abortion? Texas has a law allowing anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion to be sued, and there’s sure to be more where that came from in states that take perverse pleasure

“It is going to be monumental for people to not have the ability to rely on controlling reproduction. What that means for the course of your life is going to be huge.” Heather Shumaker National Women’s Law Center

in marginalizing women and their rights.

Oh, and if you think those folks aren’t coming for birth control next, you either didn’t read Justice Samuel Alito’s draft or are woefully naive.

This Supreme Court is so hellbent on stripping rights from anyone who isn’t white, male and wealthy that it’s unlikely the NCAA could have done anything to stop the justices from dragging the country backward. It can still make a statement to the legislators writing these burdensome laws that will make women’s lives worse, and to defend the athletes who will be harmed.

Texas will host both Final Fours next year – the women in Dallas and the men in Houston – and San Antonio will be the site of the men’s event in 2025. Phoenix will hold the men’s Final Four in 2024 and the women’s event two years after that, and Tampa, Florida, will be the site of the women’s basketball championship in 2025.

Shumaker is reluctant to suggest boycotts, saying it punishes everyone in the state for the work of a few politicians. She said the NCAA could take some of the millions that will be generated by those events and donate the money to abortion providers in other states.

Better yet, use it to establish a fund that will help defray expenses for NCAA athletes if they have to travel out of state for an abortion.

“That’s not a panacea to fixing the problem, but I think that would be one way to ensure the athletes in those states have the access that they need,” Shumaker said.

For almost 50 years, the ability to run fast, score a goal or block a shot has helped women change the course of their lives. Soon, the laws of the state where she goes to school could determine an athlete’s future.

Athletes need to give careful consideration to their choices now, so they don’t find themselves deprived of them later.