--- title: New Poll Shows Abortion Access a Factor in College Selection description: Red states, take note: Local laws governing reproductive rights are impacting where young people choose to study, even Republicans. canonical: https://time.com/6273561/abortion-ban-colleges-red-states/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-04-20T21:37:15.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T15:46:00.653Z article:section: Politics og:title: New Poll Shows Abortion Access a Factor in College Selection og:description: A new poll of college students finds a clear majority factor in laws governing reproductive health in deciding whether to stay at their current campus og:url: https://time.com/6273561/abortion-ban-colleges-red-states/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt559d43cbfa5e6fe7/698a3c2ce6e84a76742b0069/GettyImages-1248606016.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: USS-NEWS-CMP-FLA-UNIVERSITIES-2-MI og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: New Poll Shows Abortion Access a Factor in College Selection twitter:description: A new poll of college students finds a clear majority factor in laws governing reproductive health in deciding whether to stay at their current campus twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt559d43cbfa5e6fe7/698a3c2ce6e84a76742b0069/GettyImages-1248606016.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Abortion Access Is Affecting Where College Students Decide to Study > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Apr 20, 2023 9:37 PM UTC  Students walk through Florida International University's Modesto A. Maidique Campus in University Park on August 22, 2022\. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a 6-week abortion ban. Students walk through Florida International University's Modesto A. Maidique Campus in University Park on August 22, 2022\. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a 6-week abortion ban. Sydney Walsh—Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Apr 20, 2023 9:37 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ For years, consultants paid to help colleges draw more applicants urged premium amenities, posh student centers, and professional-grade athletic complexes. But, in the current environment, an unlikely selling point has quietly emerged: access to abortion rights. In a new tranche of [research](https://news.gallup.com/poll/474365/reproductive-health-laws-factor-college-decisions.aspx) released Thursday from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation, almost three-quarters of college students told pollsters that laws governing reproductive health factored into their decision of whether to stay enrolled in their current campus or leave. While Democrats have the strongest interest in abortion rights, a clear 62% of Republicans also said they play a factor in picking a university. Among all college students, the support for states that have greater access to abortion is by an overwhelming 4-to-1 margin, including two-thirds of Republicans who said they prefer states with less restrictive abortion laws. It’s also a pronounced winner among women (86%) and men (74%) alike. The survey of about 6,000 current college students and 6,000 college-age adults is among the first hard pieces of evidence of the second-order effects of last year’s _Dobbs_ [decision](https://time.com/6223833/dobbs-abortion-hope/) that reversed a half-century of national legal access to abortion rights. _Dobbs_ sent the question of abortion back to state legislatures, and [13 states](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html) have all-but-outlawed the medical procedure. Five other states have bans starting as soon as six weeks of gestation, and the federal courts are considering competing cases dealing with abortion medication. The results may not come as a total surprise for anyone involved in the higher ed world, but for those scrambling to maintain student rolls in a red state, it’s another piece of bad news on top of what was already keeping policy wonks up at night: the Enrollment Cliff. Higher ed officials across the country were already bracing for the next few years at the very real prospect that application rates will [dip](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2023/02/02/new-data-suggest-the-college-enrollment-slide-is-leveling-off/?sh=4054a2784968), and hard. That’s because the young professionals of the late aughts and early ‘10s didn’t have children at the same rates as their slightly older counterparts. Birth rates [fell](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-u-s-birth-rate-has-fallen-since-the-2007-great-recession-even-as-growth-and-wealth-have-recovered-what-happened-11645111685) and [stayed](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/04/06/us-birth-rate-decline-linked-to-recession/) low as young families remained skittish about being about to provide in a shaky economy. COVID, too, had a [baby bust](https://www.brookings.edu/research/half-a-million-fewer-children-the-coming-covid-baby-bust/). As a result, the numbers of applicants—and then matriculators—are forecast to shrink for the next two decades. While the high-demand flagships and marquee schools will make out just fine, mid- and lower-tier universities could see themselves hollowed out, as the economics of their offerings simply don’t match the moment. Statistically, the trend seems to be cutting particularly hard against red states. In states with Republican governors right now, enrollment this fall declined on average, while states with Democratic governors crept up ever so slightly, according to my [reading](https://www.cupahr.org/issue/dept/interactive-enrollment-cliff/) of the [numbers](https://nscresearchcenter.org/current-term-enrollment-estimates/). There were, of course, outliers: Wyoming was up 8%, Maryland was off by almost 5%. But on average, the states that can least afford to be losing ground with potential college students were those where Republicans now lead, and those are the states that, writ large, are moving to constrict abortion rights. In other words, their culture war agenda is poised to ding their higher-ed policies as a bank-shot casualty. So as many state leaders are treating abortion rights as something confined to health clinics, they are missing the broader ripples here. Much the same way [corporations](https://time.com/3974186/transgender-bathroom-debate/) and [sports](https://time.com/4488786/ncaa-relocates-north-carolina-bathroom-bill/) voted with their feet when states adopted policies that were counter to their values, college applicants are looking closely at the cultural climate of places where they could spend four—or likely [more](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/college-students-dont-graduate-4-years-government-counts-6-years-succe-rcna2776)—years studying and exploring their lives as young adults. red states were [already](https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-red-state-disadvantage) having a tough time attracting talent among students and professors alike, and veering to the right on abortion is only going to make retaining their rankings and prestige more difficult. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6273561/abortion-ban-colleges-red-states/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6273561/abortion-ban-colleges-red-states/"},"headline":"Abortion Access Is Affecting Where College Students Decide to Study","datePublished":"2023-04-20T21:37:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T15:46:00.653Z","description":"Red states, take note: Local laws governing reproductive rights are playing a bigger role in where young people choose to study.","url":"https://time.com/6273561/abortion-ban-colleges-red-states/","keywords":["The D.C. 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