Abortion laws could be a factor for students choosing college

But the Supreme Court decision last month that overturned Roe v. Wade, erasing the constitutional right to abortion, scrambled her calculations. Upset over the ruling, she is torn over whether to apply to a well-known university in a state that is moving to ban most abortions. She finds strict antiabortion laws disturbing. “It’s really hard to ignore,” she said.

The rapid emergence of state abortion bans in the South, Midwest and elsewhere has jolted many parents and college-bound students, forcing hard questions within families about what matters in the college search. Many schools in abortion-banning states, meanwhile, face the risk of losing potential students from huge swaths of the country that favor abortion rights.

Several prominent schools in this situation declined requests for interviews about how they would respond to prospective students concerned about abortion access. But some acknowledged the issue in written statements.

In Texas, leaders of Rice University wrote last month that the court’s ruling “has serious consequences for women,” imposing new hurdles to the effective management of reproductive health. The state has banned abortion, with narrow exceptions.

“The added burdens, including out of state travel for those seeking abortion services, will fall most harshly on the least economically advantaged,” the university’s outgoing president, David W. Leebron, and provost (now president), Reginald DesRoches, wrote to their community on June 28. “Rice is committed to gender equality and to supporting our faculty, staff, and students. We are exploring how we can best continue to appropriately support the reproductive rights of our community, including access to abortion services.”

The private university in Houston, with about 4,000 undergraduates, illuminates an enrollment fact crucial for many big-name colleges and universities: Most of its students come from out of state.

A Washington Post analysis of federal enrollment data for fall 2020 found that 25 percent of incoming freshmen at Rice were from California, New York, Illinois and other states where abortion is legal and likely to remain protected. Forty percent hailed from Texas, and another 12 percent from other states where abortion bans are in place or imminent. The rest were mostly from overseas or states where abortion is legal now.

Of course, the laws of any given state do not determine how individuals who live there feel…