With the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh for justice of the Supreme Court earlier this month, people are speculating that Roe v. Wade might be overturned.
The 1973 court case legalized abortion nationwide. If it were to be overturned, the regulation of abortion would be up to the states.
“I’m really excited for the possibility that Roe v. Wade is overturned — I really hope that it actually happens,” said Kevin Aponte Lemos, a UF mathematics junior and the Pro-Life Chair of UF Young Americans for Freedom.
Lemos’ opinion is based on his moral convictions from being raised Catholic, he said.
“My faith is pretty important to me, and I believe in the sanctity of all human life,” Lemos said, “and I think that from a biological perspective, a fetus is a human, so it should have the same rights that other humans have.”
However, overturning Roe v. Wade would indirectly lead to the deaths of women and children across the country, said Mariam Mohamed, a UF women’s studies senior and the vice president of UF Generation Action.
Having an abortion is 10 to 14 times medically safer at any given point in a pregnancy than it is to carry a pregnancy to term, she said.
“There is no possible good outcome from restricting access to a procedure like this that is so important in this world,” she said.
College students, especially at UF, need better access to consent education, multiple birth control methods and the morning after pill, Mohamed said.
The Gainesville chapter of the National Women’s Liberation is currently pushing for a vending machine on campus that students could purchase the morning after pill from, she said.
“The idea that you can only get Plan B from the UF infirmary from 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and not on games days and just whenever the clinic is open,” Mohamed said. “That’s not enough.”