New Scholarship for Pregnant & Parenting Students

The prolife student group at St. Louis University in Missouri is doing something truly deserving of the name prolife. It is establishing an endowed scholarship for pregnant and parenting students.

Now here is a fundraising goal that our readers are no doubt interested in helping the SLU students to achieve. So, why not contribute what you can?

And if your own current school or alma mater does not have help in abundance for its pregnant and parenting students, then it needs to. Right now. Why not raise the issue? Sadly enough, it could be that no one has. Yet.

Whatever its shortcomings in my personal opinion, Feminists for Life does offer an Evaluate Your Campus tool to find out just how friendly or unfriendly your school is to the pregnant and the parenting--and to identify the changes that need to be made.

Under Threat: College Women's Right to Nonviolent Choice

Women in college or university are at particular risk of unintended pregnancy and abortion. So many schools have practically nothing available or publicized to help pregnant students carry to term and then carry out their own decisions for parenting, adoption or some other care option for their children. Many even sabotage the educations of pregnant or parenting women, by expelling them, or driving them away by not offering enough financial aid, for example.

That's why the Nonviolent Choice Directory has an Education section (http://www.nonviolentchoice.info/education.html if the link doesn't work) and why we just added some more resources to it...not to mention other pages to help get through a crisis pregnancy and beyond, and to prevent crisis pregnancy in the first place.

We have started a list of colleges and universities that have specialized programs to assist pregnant and parenting students. Kudos to the schools that have these programs...but...the list is pathetically short. Every school, at every level, with students past puberty needs to have such a program! And, of course, comprehensive sex education and prevention efforts...

If you are a US citizen, please send your politicians a letter in support of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Students Act (which was introduced into the House by sister Polonian Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio). This will help to create more of these urgently necessary pregnancy and parenting programs at the college/university level. Compared to the need, it's a drop in the bucket, but it's better than nothing, and it's a start.

Please also give them a shout about the Prevention Through Affordable Access Act. The availability of reduced-price contraception for college students and lowincome women is under attack, and if the assault brings down this option, more abortions and other harms are practically inevitable.

Please stand up for college women, and for their already-conceived kids!