On Friday, Oct. 28, Vice President Kamala Harris came to Bryn Mawr College for a talk on reproductive rights in light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the upcoming U.S. election on Nov. 8. Harris was interviewed by actress Sophia Bush and accompanied by Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA).
The right to abortion is not protected by the state of Pennsylvania, but as of November 2022, it’s still legal to get an abortion before 24 weeks of pregnancy. As a student at a historically women’s college, an institution that supports access to education for all marginalized genders, I think a lot about what this lack of protection means for my peers and I, who are reliant on our education as a source of empowerment in a world where many men have political say over what people choose to do with their own bodies.
Vice President Kamala Harris told students, “I ask you to please use all of the creative ways that you have to communicate with large numbers of people, to remind people they are not alone, to remind people they are not being judged, to remind them that we stand with them and that there is so much support for them.”
At Bryn Mawr College Commencement in May 2022, cultural historian and cookbook author Jessica B. Harris spoke to the student body about how her graduating class fought towards liberating the (birth control) pill and said one of her peers was Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female president of Harvard University. Harris said the students sitting in the seats in front of her were facing the same issues her class faced in the 1960s until abortion became a constitutional right in 1973. As a student of art history and a member of Gen-Z, I acknowledge that history repeats itself, time and time again.
On Friday, June 24, 2022, I sat in the Campus Center at Bryn Mawr when I got a news alert that Roe v. Wade had been overturned. I felt the same way I soon learned my friends were feeling – a sickening lust for women to feel right in this world, to feel right in their own bodies. I spend my days at Bryn Mawr watching my peers work their hardest to prove their claim to a place in the world of academia. To put most simply, the news felt like a slap across the face. To know that a woman like Linda Wharton, a 1977 graduate of Bryn Mawr and co-lead counsel for Planned Parenthood v. Casey (the other case overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson), attended the school I attend made this issue hit home, quite literally.
If you also felt that crushing feeling I did when I heard the news of Roe being overturned, you may find these words of Vice President Harris comforting. Bush asked her, “We have a lot of young people here. What’s your message to them? What can they do? They’re eager to mobilize.” Harris responded, “Do what you’re already doing. I know who this college is. I know who you are. This is a roomful of leaders. So do what you do. You know how to do it. And do it knowing that we need you. We’re not only counting on you; we really need you. The best movements in our country have been about the expansion of rights, in my opinion, and have been led by students and certainly fueled by students. So, do what you do. And I thank you. That’s why I’m here to thank you.”