The recent Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court, which overturned half a century of abortion rights, will affect wide areas of society, and higher education will be no exception.
The impacts on higher education will fall into (at least) five areas: reduced college enrollment, particularly for Black women; disruption of training in medical schools; changes in on-campus student health services; reductions in out-of-state enrollment in anti-abortion states; and shifts in faculty location decisions away from anti-abortion states. For some of these issues, existing research provides a useful guide to likely outcomes.
Other outcomes will take time to unfold and depend on how anti-abortion restrictions and enforcement evolve in individual states, but informed guesses are possible.
