This piece was originally published for Disorientation Northeastern.
Some Acronyms: SHARE and RJ
Reproductive justice (RJ): “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities” (SisterSong, a national activist organization of women of color dedicated to reproductive justice for all).
We are SHARE. That’s short for Sexual Health Advocacy, Resources, and Education. SHARE is a student-led organization on Northeastern’s campus and a chapter of Planned Parenthood’s Generation Action network. But we are so much more than our title; we are a group of individuals from all walks of life and backgrounds, passionate about sexual health, sex positivity, reproductive justice, communication & consent, health education & access for the community around us, and so much more.
Just like our membership and work is multifaceted, so are our partners in this work. We’ve collaborated with all sorts of organizations and bodies on and off campus, ranging from community partners like Fenway Health and the Boston Alliance of LGBTQ+ Youth (BAGLY) to clubs like the Latin-American Student Organization (LASO) and the newly-founded Gardening Club – and yes, we’ve worked extensively with the Northeastern administration and resource centers, such as University Health & Counseling Services (UHCS), the LGBTQA Resource Center, and the Center for Intercultural Engagement (CIE), where we hold our weekly meetings.
RJ work has never been easy. Old-fashioned attitudes and deeply-entrenched stigmas — along with the codification of these into local law, university policy, and traditions in academia — regularly obstruct efforts to achieve the kind of sexual and reproductive freedom we think our students and faculty deserve. But our belief in the power of collective action and in the importance of pressure – internal and external to these power structures – urges us forward and has earned us many successes of which we feel proud.
Hard-Earned Victories at Northeastern
In the summer of 2022, when Roe vs. Wade was overturned by the corrupt, conservative majority of the Supreme Court, abortion access was crippled in countless communities across the nation as abortion-access policy-making was returned to the states. Countless more RJ organizations and abortion funds had no choice but to step up, massively increasing fundraising efforts, working across community & state lines, defending persecuted abortion-seekers, and trying to give as many patients access to the abortion care they deserve as possible when their state fails to provide it.
SHARE wanted and needed to step up as well, to fill gaps in reproductive care & access where we saw them. Luckily, abortion remains legal in Massachusetts and broadly accessible, with few limitations. This is largely due to the 2022 passage of key provisions of the ROE Act 2 by the state legislature, to remove certain politically-motivated abortion restrictions that delayed and denied care. At the time, SHARE undertook a letter-writing campaign to support this legislation.
However, other needs weren’t being met by Northeastern and local health services. Emergency contraception – a necessary medical resource that can help prevent a pregnancy when taken within 3-5 days of unprotected sex, depending on the pill brand – remains wickedly expensive at local pharmacies. Students could access it through UHCS, but approaching the clinic for reproductive care made many students uncomfortable. Additionally, contraceptives were only accessible during the limited UHCS hours.
That summer, we pushed back against this care gap and made our voices heard to the university that failed to see it. After months of advocacy and through work with UHCS and the Office of Prevention & Education at Northeastern (OPEN), we established the Wellness Vending Machine. This is an easily accessible machine that distributes condoms, dental dams, period supplies, ibuprofen, Tums and most importantly… emergency contraception subsidized by the university for seven dollars! SEVEN DOLLARS. That’s an 86% price cut from the nearly $50 price-point at the local pharmacy! We also put the machine in the lobby of Marino Gym, which is an on-campus building open for most hours of the day and one that does not require a Husky Card to enter. This way, local community members can access this subsidized resource as well.
SHARE has filled Northeastern’s gaps in many other ways. We host sexual health pop-ups on campus every month to provide sexual health supplies and education to community members. We are invited by fraternities and sororities to host sexual health presentations and workshops. We bring a variety of speakers to campus with a host of identities – queer, fat, Brown & Black, disabled, Desi & Indigenous. While Northeastern focuses their keynote speakers on Big Tech and Big Business, we focus on Big Dreams to prioritize the health of students.
We’ve also hosted workshops and discussions on a variety of topics, from kink and sexual communication to gynecology and polyamory. Our upcoming event –the 3rd Annual Pleasure Party on September 18th in Curry Ballroom – will be a celebration of pleasure and self-love. It will include tables with representatives from Fenway Health, BAGLY, Planned Parenthood, OPEN, the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, and our favorite local pleasure shop, Good Vibes. This is just some of the community of excellent health, pleasure, and RJ resources we want Northeastern students to know about. And we’re hosting all of them in one of Northeastern’s most central venues, something we’d never see the university administration prioritize.
We’re so grateful for our partners and friends in UHCS, OPEN, the CIE, and the LGBTQ+ Resource Center who will dream and work with us. But their hands are often tied by the entrenched decision-makers in the administration above them, such as with medical abortion.
The Ongoing Struggle for On-Campus Medication Abortion
SHARE is currently deep in efforts to bring medication abortion – a process in which prescription drugs are used to terminate a pregnancy – to the on-campus clinic at UHCS. We know students need this: abortion clinics are often backed up and stretched for funds, students don’t often have the money or time for in-clinic procedures, and many students are limited by their insurance and home-locale rules. Many other universities offer this resource on-campus, such as Barnard in NYC and all public universities in California and Massachusetts due to new legislation from the past few years.
Private universities are not bound to this new Massachusetts law, so it’s up to them whether they provide medical abortion. But as a university that claims to be the future, Northeastern should choose to provide this service anyway.
We’ve been told “no” for a variety of reasons, many of which simply aren’t true or are fixable with simple investments. One such reason is the university claims that they would need an ultrasound machine to conduct medical abortions; this is untrue, as the FDA approved medication abortion for telehealth, without an ultrasound requirement, in 2021. Even if this was the case, the administration seems unwilling to spend the money to buy an ultrasound machine, despite spending god-knows-how-many-millions-or-billions on their new fancy building, EXP.
We know our people in UHCS and other spaces are doing their best to try and make this happen. But there’s only so much they can do against a budget and the university powers-that-be.
Whether the university is choosing not to prioritize funds for this service or is truly just afraid to see how wading into abortion services might affect their bottom-line, Northeastern students deserve better. We deserve a university where it’s safe to have sex, get pregnant, and terminate a pregnancy. The queer, Black & Brown, immigrant, and disabled students affected most by these kinds of health barriers deserve better. We all do.
For now and as a first step, SHARE is focusing on updating and improving how and where UHCS refers students for abortions services. But we aren’t giving up.
We can always use new voices and new ideas at SHARE. Just as these issues & barriers affect entire communities, even stronger than that is the energy of entire communities to expose & address. Northeastern needs that kind of solidarity.
“Pleasure is not one of the spoils of capitalism. It is what our bodies, our human systems, are structured for; it is the aliveness and awakening, the gratitude and humility, the joy and celebration of being miraculous” (Adrienne Maree Brown in her book, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good).
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