Local college students, young adults voice opinions on overturn of Roe

Olivia Stevens, The Free Press, Mankato, Minn.
·4 min read
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Jul. 29—"Completely oblivious" is how 18-year-old Myra Helder felt when she heard that abortion rights would no longer be protected under the Constitution.

"It seems fake," Helder said. "With a lot of things in this country, we had grown up under a lie that we were taken care of, and it's hard to realize that maybe you're not as protected as you thought."

Since the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson decision released June 24, which overturned a 1973 ruling that the right to an abortion was protected by the U.S. Constitution, young people have been speaking up about what the decision means for them and their futures.

According to a Pew Research Center poll from this year, adults younger than age 30 are the most likely age group to believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases in the United States, at 74%. Comparatively, 61% of all U.S. adults believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Sharon Marquart, director of the gender, women and sexuality studies program at Gustavus Adolphus College, said she was teaching a course on reproductive rights this spring when a draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked. She said many of her students were shocked that many neighboring states to Minnesota would soon heavily restrict or ban abortion.

One of these students, senior Ellie Hartmann, has been organizing with the student group Students for Reproductive Freedom for the past two years. She said as a member, she's worked on projects that involved giving out free menstrual products to students at Gustavus and providing sex education resources to those who failed to receive certain such information earlier in their education.

"I think a lot of the people that I work with believed that we were fighting for rights to be expanded and did not envision ourselves having to fight for rights that we were born with," Hartmann said.

Despite some of their peers' anger with the decision and its implications, other students celebrated the court's ruling in Dobbs.

Grayce Limpert, 23, is entering her second year as a master's student at Minnesota State University. She said she changed her position on abortion rights while researching the legal side of abortion and speaking to people who were against it.

"I think that humans have a uniqueness to learn and to love, and in a country that guarantees life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it only makes sense that they would allow that life with potential to realize that as well," Limpert said.

MSU student Zachary Hammerschmidt, 38, a senior undergraduate, agreed that the court did the right thing in returning power to the states in this case, and he said moving forward, he hopes this court avoids the "judicial activism" that he believes was displayed with Roe.

"I think the hardest part about this is once you remove something that for 50 years has been told you as a right, even though it never should have been seen as a right according to the Constitution, it's very hard to go back to that," Hammerschmidt said. "And I think that is a justified response."

Marquart expressed concern that the decision would cause young people in particular to feel "under attack" and increase political polarization. She said she is concerned about students' mental health suffering as they worry about what this decision and possible decisions to come mean for them.

"I think that there's going to be a lot more bunkering that happens," Marquart said. "Out of just basic self-preservation, community-preservation ... There is this cascading effect and a lot of doomsday thinking that is hard to see as unjustified right now.

"Now is really the time to love one another, help our neighbors and really be there for each other in the best way that we can," Hartmann said.

Limpert explained the backlash to the decision as a "knee-jerk reaction," but said she thinks division over the issue will eventually pass and lead to a positive "cultural conversation" that will change other people's minds about abortion.

"As long as people are willing to explore the possibility of individual rights detached from the mother with rights, I think that we can move forward with exploring some of these bigger conversations about how we view abortion and how we view pregnancy," Limpert said.