University of Michigan Creates Abortion-Access Task Force in Anticipation of Roe Reversal

T he University of Michigan has created an abortion-access task force in response to the Supreme Court’s potential overturning of Roe v. Wade. The task force, commissioned by university president Mary Sue Coleman, will serve to make “plans to manage in a post-Roe v. Wade environment, by determining how an abortion ban could affect clinical care, educational instruction, student health and more,” according to a report from the University Record, the administration’s official news outlet.

If the ruling in the leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the same as the forthcoming official one, abortion may become illegal in Michigan due to the presence of a 1931 ban, which became dormant after the 1973 decision. In light of a legal challenge from Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s administration, it is questionable whether the law will take effect again. If it does, one of the primary focuses of the task force, the report says, will be to “work to establish resources for accessing out-of-state abortions that can be provided to patients and others in the campus community,” presumably students.

Making up the committee will be leaders from various departments in Michigan Medicine, the university’s health system, and the university’s medical school. In addition, the task force will include professors and students from the departments of gender studies, psychology, and the school of information.

“Regardless of one’s personal feelings about abortion, as professionals providing reproductive health care, this is a time of great uncertainty for us and for our patients. But we are pulling together a large, diverse group of university leaders to make sure we are prepared for whatever may happen,” the task force’s co-chairwoman, Dee Fenner, said in the report.

Diverse in what sense? Fenner did not elaborate, but there is certainly no commitment to ideological diversity on the task force. It does not include a single leader from a pro-life student organization.

“I find it frustrating that the university uses student tuition to fund a service that actively goes against part of the student body’s beliefs,” Hanna Merrithew, president of Protect Life at the University of Michigan, told National Review. “I think instead of providing access to abortion, the university could use the money to provide resources for parenting students and available information on the diverse range of option for unexpected pregnancies.”

Also excluded from the conversation about this task force were the university’s College Republicans.

“The announcement from the university is frustrating in every way possible,” said outgoing College Republicans vice-chairwoman Margaret Beste, who noted the many opinions that students have on abortion. “Like every other ‘task force’ convened by the university, no significant student population is ever included in the planning process. It’s almost always various academic departments and administrators who believe that they have the knowledge and power to speak for students.”

“If the university truly wanted to help students, they might try asking some,” Beste added.

Nor did the university seek the input of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, which I lead.

Right-of-center students at Michigan are no strangers to the university’s culture of left-wing bias. However, we are usually subject only to empty commitments to “fighting gun violence,” “stopping climate change,” and “anti-racism” or the usual buzzwords that have become devoid of meaning, such as “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” This abortion task force reaches a new level. True, the university health system already performs abortions, but it can justify that policy as simply offering a legal service that many health systems do. Now, the administration is taking a political stand, alienating pro-life students by actively promoting a practice that we believe results in the murder of innocent children, and it is using our tuition to do it.

We can make similar complaints from our position as taxpayers in the State of Michigan. Here is a case of a public university endorsing a procedure that is morally objectionable to many Michiganders. In addition to these conscience-based concerns, the task force is also dubious in its relation to the rule of law. The university is openly advertising its willingness to circumvent a law passed by the same state government that funds it. One cannot consider the university subordinate to the state when it is actively undermining the laws of its duly elected legislature.

Conservative and other pro-life students on campus want to be a part of the campus community at Michigan, but it becomes increasingly difficult to do so when the university uses our tuition for morally abominable practices that contradict the laws of the government that funds it. The administration is failing a large portion of its student body, one that has become accustomed to feeling left out.