The Stigma of “Late-Term Abortions” Is the Point

Article originally appeared in Mother Jones on June 3rd, 2021

When Jessy was 20 years old, she needed an abortion. At the time, she was a student at UC Riverside, where she led a campus reproductive justice advocacy group—she was quite aware of what was happening to her body and familiar with what needed to be done. What she didn’t anticipate were all the barriers she herself would face, all the stumbling blocks that sprang up between her and the care she desperately required, even in a state that’s considered to be a bastion for abortion access. It was the fall of 2016 when she started to feel sick; she went to the student health center, which confirmed she was pregnant, but because it did not have an ultrasound machine, she could not know how far along she was in the pregnancy. The health center referred her to a family planning clinic where they said she could arrange abortion care, but when she called them, they told her they don’t offer those services. In fact, the voice on the other end of the line said, she was not the first to call asking for an abortion, and though the clinic had told the student health center that abortion services weren’t available, students were continuing to be referred there anyhow.