The American Feminist

The American Feminist, Summer 1996

FFL Reaches Out to College Campuses

"Your pregnancy test has come back positive," says the college clinic director. She offers to help set up an appointment for an abortion. She does not talk about fetal development. There is no mention of what the abortion procedure involves. No referral is made to the local crisis pregnancy center with its numerous resources for pregnant women.

For many college-age women who visit their college clinic and find out they are pregnant, abortion is offered as the only "viable" choice. As a result, college women are the most vulnerable to having an abortion. One college clinic reported that out of 88 women who had positive pregnancy tests, only one woman chose to carry her pregnancy to term.

To reach out to college women and make sure they have real choices, FFL is developing a college outreach program to be implemented in the fall of 1996. Many voices have come together to shape this initiative, including post-abortive women, clinic staff, women who experienced crisis pregnancies, crisis pregnancy center directors, and people on both sides of the abortion debate.

One of the integral parts of the College Outreach Program is FFL's Clinic Kit, which provides resources for women facing a crisis pregnancy. The kit is in its initial development and will be tested in the Washington, D.C., area. College clinic staff helped identify a number of key pieces in the kit.

College women who suspect that they are pregnant are routinely referred to abortion clinics by the college clinic counselors. FFL's Clinic Kit will include materials such as Rolodex cards listing resources for pregnant women; a crisis-pregnancy brochure from a post-abortive woman, with a national resource listing; as well as a woman's right-to-know brochure by FFL's advisor on abortion, Pamela Smith, M.D., president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The College Outreach Program also seeks to empower women through FFL's Pro-Life Feminist History Kit. Excellent for women's studies programs, American history and public policy classes, the kit contains three pro-life feminist books, a subscription to The American Feminist for the university library, membership brochures, FFL's "What Women Really Want" brochure, and our new "Voices of our Feminist Foremothers" poster of early feminist quotes regarding abortion. The entire kit will be available in the fall.

To reinforce FFL's presence on campus, ads will be placed in college newspapers to direct students to FFL's new home page on the Internet's World Wide Web, which has become a big information source for college students. FFL's Web page includes most of our unique pro- woman, pro-life materials, as well as stories from post-abortive women and selected articles from The American Feminist

FFL leaders are also available for speaking engagements on college campuses. In the past year, the Ivy League Coalition for Life, Georgetown University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University and American University sponsored FFL speakers.

FFL would like to acknowledge its members and an anonymous foundation for enthusiastically supporting a college-outreach matching gift plan to raise funds for this crucial program. FFL is indebted to its members and volunteers who donate their time and resources to preventing the tragedy of abortion.