Kuttner on TAP: Reproductive Rights Crushed at Oberlin

In my coverage about the insidious obstacles to women’s reproductive health, I mentioned the role of Catholic hospitals. As the epidemic of mergers has continued, Catholic hospital systems, now about one system in six, have been acquiring non-Catholic ones, imposing their views on abortion, contraception, and resistance to properly treating miscarriages or fetal deaths that might be mistaken for abortion. If you have been in a health system that suddenly converted to Catholic, good luck.

I was stunned to see that this plague has now affected, of all places, my cherished alma mater Oberlin College. Oberlin, co-ed since its founding in 1833, was the first college in America to admit women, the first to welcome African Americans, and has been a center of strong feminism and social justice generally.

But the current college president, Carmen Twillie Ambar, has been on a tear to cut costs. Ambar busted the food service workers union, laid off workers, and hired cheaper replacements. She also shut down the campus health service and made a contract with Harness Health Partners, a subsidiary of Bon Secours Mercy, a Catholic health system.

Ambar assured students that reproductive services would continue as before. Ambar even appeared with other college presidents and Vice President Kamala Harris after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe came down, to call for a staunch defense of abortion rights.

But the aptly named Harness not only fails to cover abortion. It won’t even cover contraception for unmarried students. This was surely predictable.

In her “welcome back” letter to students on August 25, Ambar wrote, “The Student Health Center, for example, will continue to provide prescriptions for birth control and Plan B, referrals for those seeking an abortion, and STI testing and treatment.” But this is simply not true.

Last April, Ambar laid off the entire health center staff of six in favor of the pending contract with the Catholic Harness system. One of the displaced staffers, a nurse practitioner named Aimee Holmes, had solely treated women patients, providing gynecological exams and dispensing birth control.

Yesterday, the local paper, the Chronicle-Telegram, reported that approximately 40 percent of Oberlin student health visits were about sexual health, according to Erin Gornall, R.N, the clinical coordinator. Students received birth control pills for free or nominal fees, and emergency contraception, from an onsite pharmacy. Gornall also worked with nonbinary students.

With the shift to a Catholic health system, all of these services are up in smoke. At Oberlin, no less! If it can happen at Oberlin, it can happen anywhere.

Well, if it’s Oberlin as I remember it, the campus will be in an uproar when students return tomorrow.