California To Spend Millions On Student Abortion Pill Outreach After LAist Investigation

To raise awareness about access to abortion pills at California’s public universities, a state agency will spend $2.3 million in grant money on informational campaigns and student outreach.

LAist reported that more than a year after state law required public universities to provide the pills to students at campus health clinics, many were not letting the students know about them. Several University of California and California State University campuses failed to provide information about medication abortions on their websites or list it anywhere as a service offered.

LAist also reported that how much students pay for medication abortion pills differed wildly by campus. At a California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls meeting on April 3, LAist’s reporting was specifically cited by grant manager Jen DeGrossa.

What are the next steps?

On Monday, the commission unanimously approved a plan to devote the funds toward public relations and marketing campaigns expected to make the state's more than 750,000 public university students aware that abortion pills are available through the campus health clinics.

The goal is to create “improved awareness” DeGrossa said. The first step is to add information for public university students to a state informational abortion website.

“It gives them instructions on who to call at their campus for this service and it also flags backup support in case they run into any issues trying to access the service,” DeGrossa told commissioners.

Where does the money come from?

In 2019, California legislators passed a law requiring all 33 public university campuses to provide abortion pills. The law took effect in January 2023, after implementation was delayed by the pandemic.

The legislature created a $10.29 million fund of privately raised money to help universities implement the new law. Of that, each campus received $200,000 in one-time funding to pay for the medication and cover costs such as facility upgrades, equipment, training, telehealth services, and security improvements.

DeGrossa told commissioners on April 3 that $8.1 million of the grant money had already been spent and proposed that the remaining money, which totals $2.3 million, focus on student outreach. The grant must be spent by the end of 2026.

How will the money be spent?

Of the remaining funding, the majority — just under $1.6 million — would pay for commission staff, including the communications team, according to DeGrossa.

About $750,000 will be used for outreach consultants to design social media and marketing campaigns.

“We'd like to use the remaining funds to develop a (public relations) and outreach campaign to help improve awareness about medication abortion at each of the campuses," DeGrossa said. "We're still exploring what this will look like, we are navigating the state system, the procurement process, so we'll still have to vet proposals.”

DeGrossa did not say when the outreach materials or support would be available to campuses.

Of the rest of the funds, $40,000 will go into a travel fund so commission employees can visit campus clinics around the state.

The state commission estimates that a final impact report will cost $58,000 to produce, and the remaining $478,000 will be taken up by the cost of the commission itself, under operations and expenditures.