Rice after Roe: Abortion perspectives on campus

DANIKA LI THRESHER STAFF

June 24, 2022 was an awful day, Sarah Eleraky remembers.

“I felt a physical pain that day, I remember feeling heaviness on my chest,” Eleraky, a Lovett College sophomore, said. “It was more than just feeling like I’m stuck in Texas and I can’t get abortion if I need one, but also feeling like we’re going backwards.”

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MORGAN GAGE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

When Roe v. Wade was struck down in June 2022, the 23 abortion clinics across the state closed their doors to abortion patients. While some clinics such as Planned Parenthood branches continued to offer reproductive healthcare services, others relocated to “haven” states where abortion was still legal, such as New Mexico, or shut down entirely. As of October 2022, nearly half of U.S. abortion clinic closures were in Texas.

This was the final blow in a long history of restrictions on abortion in Texas, some of which were periodically struck down or affirmed by the Supreme Court in previous rulings. Abortion clinic numbers dwindled as a result.

Simultaneously, the state legislature funneled funds into “alternatives to abortions,” including counseling for employment readiness and parenting classes, care coordination for government services, assistance with the purchase of essentials such as formula and diapers and housing and support services through maternity homes.

LifeHouse, though not a Texas Health and Human Services contracted provider, exists at the intersection of these services. Founded in 1988, their website claims they are “only one of two maternity homes in a 14-county area open to minors as young as 12 years old.” The Christian nonprofit is rooted in religious teachings, with the goal of setting up women facing unplanned pregnancies with a “forever family centered on Christ” by providing free lodging, meals, prenatal care, life skills training, counseling, access to work and school and “God’s overwhelming love.”

Claire Hao, executive director of LifeHouse, said that LifeHouse’s mission is to care for women in crisis pregnancy — “to give them hope, to give them a future” — by providing support services as well as modeling parenting and life skills in a home-like setting, with “house parents” who live on the property alongside those they are supporting.

“We call it discipleship in the Christian world, which means, basically, that you’re just teaching as you go. As you’re living your life, others are living their life alongside, you are teaching that way of life,” Hao said. “We hope that our women just feel that love and support.”

According to Hao, LifeHouse, in the last year, added a full-time social worker as well as a full-time counselor to their staff in order to provide additional support, with the social worker “looking at those larger systematic issues” and counselor addressing “deeper psychological stressors that they may have coming into the ministry.”

Gina “G” House, LifeHouse’s director of development and donor relations, said that opportunities for learning such as parenting, cooking and healthy relationship classes are essential to the program’s goal of setting up parents for long term success. She also hopes that people understand that supporting expecting families takes time.

“There are no quick fixes to these issues,” House said. “We are investing in life, lives, two at a time, we say. Invest[ing] in a life takes time and intentionality and perseverance and commitment and steadiness, and I just think that we have to give our women time to learn to … repair the broken things in their life, to be taught and trained with new, valuable things that they can use out in the community.”

With an ongoing debate between abortion-rights and anti-abortion advocates that, at times, frames antiabortion advocates as calling for birth without providing resources, House says: “The proof is in the history.”

“LifeHouse didn’t just start yesterday. There’s so many decades of women that have come through, that have been supported. Sometimes they’ll have their first child and sometimes their fourth depending on the situation, but LifeHouse has always been a safe haven,” House said. “I think of hope for women and will continue to be that. We stand behind what we say, we give our lives to this and the people that are staff at LifeHouse do as well.”

In order to better advocate for women, Hao said that the community needs to understand that for a woman to have a choice, she needs to have the opportunity to choose to parent or place a child up for adoption.

“We want to be here to say that it is wise for a woman to parent her baby or to put that baby up for adoption,” Hao said. “I’m hoping that our city can get around that and understand that to be pro-woman means also to be pro-life, because we’re allowing the woman a choice.”

Looking across the aisle, Hao said that there is a lack of pregnancy resources overall, whether someone chooses to receive an abortion or carry a pregnancy to term.

This story has been cut off for print. Read the full article at projects.ricethresher.org.

On that day, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that established the constitutional right to abortion. The event was galvanizing for many Rice students involved with reproductive rights movements.

One club on campus impacted by this decision was Planned Parenthood Generation Action, a nationwide network of abortion-rights campus groups sponsored by Planned Parenthood. Allison Stocks started working to establish a Rice chapter for Planned Parenthood Generation Action in 2021.

“We hosted one event with pastries and parenthood … and I gave out buttons,” Stocks said. “But it was too late to become an official club, and so we started off with a slow start.”

In the wake of Roe being overturned, Stocks doubled down on her efforts. She said she raised over $450 via her Instagram story to purchase a steady supply of Plan B, created a program to have Planned Parenthood liaisons available to provide resources to each college and officially registered as a student club.

For many students, the pro-choice movement is about more than just abortion, despite that being its most visible issue.

“Pro-choice, at its simplest, is a movement where people want to be respected,” Stocks, a Lovett College junior, said. “[Being] pro-choice is to strive to be a person who respects other human beings, including their autonomy but also their viewpoints and opinions.”

Talia Levy serves as a peer academic advisor and Rice Health Advisor as well as being a Planned Parenthood liaison. She said she considers being a liaison particularly impactful.

“I’m appreciative that I can offer these resources because they feel a lot more real than the other resources that I offer,” Levy, a Sid Richardson College sophomore, said. “When somebody texts and asks, ‘How do you access birth control? How do you figure out insurance and doctor’s appointments? How do you get Plan B?’ it feels a lot more immediately important than telling somebody how to register for their classes or giving them cough drops.”

Almost all involved in the club are women. As the only male liaison, Thelonious Mercy, a Martel College sophomore, said he believes that the role of other people is vital in the conversation about abortion-rights and healthcare access.

“It’s really important that we as people without uteruses take a more active role in helping provide those resources,” Mercy said. “So often, cis[gender] men have been in the position of power where they’ve taken away those rights.”

Also impacted was Rice for Life, which was re-started last April, a few months before the consequential Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Jordan Killinger, a Will Rice College senior, serves as the club’s current president, and Abigail Robert, a Jones College sophomore, serves as the event coordinator.

Robert said she joined the club out of a desire to prevent “vulnerable individuals from having their human dignity denied.”

“[After] the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we felt emboldened to continue with even more fervor taking concrete steps toward helping women,” Robert wrote in an email to the Thresher. “Part of [that] includes providing women resources to be able to live healthy, flourishing lives before, during, and after their pregnancy.”

According to Robert, Rice for Life has undertaken activities such as collaborating with other Rice organizations on antihuman trafficking movements. Outside of Rice, Rice for Life volunteers with LifeHouse, a residential care facility for pregnant teens and young women.

What does it mean to live in Texas?

Texas has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, banning abortion in almost all cases. Performing an abortion is now a felony crime with a minimum civil penalty of $100,000, and punishable by prison time ranging from five years to life in prison.

Levy said her wariness of Texas as a majority anti-abortion state means she is hesitant to display her involvement with Planned Parenthood outside of her residential college.

“I want to be a resource to students at my college, but I really am not interested in everybody on campus knowing my take,” Levy said. “That is less of a reflection of Rice and more a reflection of Texas.”

This story has been cut off for print. Read the full article at projects.ricethresher.org.