Imagine: you're pregnant

A new investigation

It’s the feast of St. Luke, the Gospel writer with a particular affinity for accurate and neat recording and who particularly notes the role women played in the ministry of Jesus. Luke tells many stories of women who make up the first Church that other Gospel writers leave out: the cousins who walked together during unexpected pregnancies, the sisters who cared for him on his travels, the women who prepared his body for burial. So it seems a fitting day to celebrate women and the role they have in bearing God into the world.

For the past few months, we have been working on this report.

Are Catholic Colleges Designed for Women? FemCatholic Investigates

For this story, I spoke with many women about their experiences getting pregnant while on a university campus. Hearing their stories was one of the most moving experiences I have ever had as a reporter. It’s an honor to be trusted with someone’s stories. Especially these stories of really intimate moments and private pains.

Sometimes I think that if everyone in the whole world just had one quiet moment sitting on the other side of a telephone line of a woman telling her story, hearts would change. The woman could tell the story about a doctor dismissing her, a professor letting her down, of the shame she endured, of the uphill road she walked to get to where she is now—there are so many stories in this silent world that we don’t have language for in our everyday life. I think the world is designed, in many ways, to keep these stories silent. So to hear them—to really listen to them—is to begin the act of solidarity of walking alongside them.

Sometimes, for me, the act of reporting itself is a religious experience. Because, sometimes if you listen carefully and make space for another person to talk, you hear the stories only God knew before.

Reporting women’s experiences means digging into those silent places that the language of a male-run, male-centered, male-designed world doesn’t always have words for or a ritual around. But it’s in those silent, unspoken struggles—and in the tension between what we know is right and how we treat others—that I believe God is found.

Reporting means you begin to see the world from the perspective of the wounded, which, I think, is God’s experience of the world. And that is one of the most profoundly religious experiences I have ever had.

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By Renée Roden and Kelly Sankowski

A young Catholic woman got pregnant the summer after her sophomore year at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her pregnancy was the result of a sexual assault on campus that summer.

When she went to the campus health clinic after a positive pregnancy test, she got an appointment with an obstetrician that same day. Within 24 hours, she had an appointment for an abortion. She informed her mother of her decision, who stayed with her in a hotel during her weeklong recovery from the intense bleeding and physical side effects.

In the moment, the student appreciated the speed with which the school and doctors responded. "At the time, you're like 'I don't want this problem,'" she said in a phone interview with FemCatholic. She asked that her name be withheld to protect her privacy. But, in retrospect, she said, "They did a disservice by letting it all happen so quickly. What 19-year-old can make any big decision in 24 hours?"

Her chief concern in that moment had been for her future. And no one, she said, helped her consider that her ambitions might be possible to achieve with a child.

"I didn't know that someone could finish school while pregnant," she said.

Addressing the Core Problem: Faulty Design

President Joe Biden met last week with the reproductive rights task force in order to bolster support for women on college campuses. On October 4, the Department of Education re-issued guidance for colleges and universities to ensure support for students undergoing pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth. These guidelines did not break new ground, however. It was the same guidance that has been in place since Title IX was implemented nearly 50 years ago.

Since Title IX was implemented in 1975, women have been legally guaranteed equal access to education. While this includes protections for pregnant students, many colleges still lack the practical measures to ensure a pregnant or parenting student is able to stay on college campuses that, according to several student affairs professionals, are not designed for their needs.

Like state institutions, Catholic colleges and universities who receive federal funding are bound by Title IX, which is a Federal law that prohibits sex-discrimination in access to education.

Although Title IX has protected the rights of pregnant students to education since 1975, that has not been communicated clearly, some Title IX experts say.

Currently, the Department of Education only recommends, but does not require, that schools “make clear that prohibited sex discrimination covers discrimination against pregnant and parenting students.”

You can read the full report here.