Monday, Nov. 28, 2022.

Minca Davis // Alligator Staff

More than 50 years later, The Alligator is covering Roe again

Reflecting on newspaper’s path to independence

By Nora O’Neill Alligator Staff Writer

Lucas // Alligator Staff

The Independent Florida Alligator archives from 1966, 1971 and 1985 showcase how the newspaper covered historical abortion issues through time.

Why we’re covering Roe’s reversal

Looking at Roe in review

The topic of abortion is relevant now more than ever. And it’s our job to keep the conversation going.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June, a national discussion erupted, focused on what place abortion access has within the country. Considering The Alliga tor’s storied history with abortion, tracking the overturn’s ripple-effect impact on our community was important.

It’s one of the largest projects The Alligator has taken on in recent years. We’ve spent the past semester working to cover all facets of the issue and highlight a range of people’s perspectives.

Our staff spoke with Gainesville residents who have received abor tions, OB-GYNs on the impact of Roe’s reversal on their job and mem bers of Gen Z who define themselves as part of the new “pro-life gen eration.” We brought attention to the experience some have had with local crisis pregnancy centers and the future of emergency contracep tive vending machines on UF’s campus.

The edition also platforms the voices of local community members through columns in our opinions section. It also illustrates the voices featured in some of our articles through the powerful portraits taken by our hard-working photographers.

These efforts culminated into the special edition you have before you. Inside, you’ll find information on:

• The Alligator’s personal history with Roe v. Wade

• The personal stories of people who received abortions

• The impact of Roe’s reversal on Florida OB-GYNs

• Crisis pregnancy centers and their tax-funded activities

• UF and Santa Fe College’s abortion procedures

• The new “pro-life generation” in Florida

• Future plans for emergency contraceptive vending machines at UF

• Navigating curriculum changes in UF’s OB-GYN department

• Alachua County Public Schools’ revisiting sex education standards

• The intersection of faith and abortion

• The ways Roe’s overturn has influenced Gainesville artists

• Reproductive health in UF athletics

• The post-Roe world of politics

• President-elect Ben Sasse’s anti-abortion stance

We recognize not everyone has easy access to abortion-related in formation, and we aim to make it more readily available to those who may need it through this project. We also acknowledge covering abor tion is vital given its current limbo in the country.

We hope the Gainesville community sees a little bit of themselves in the coverage we’ve put forth — no matter where you fall on the issue.

It would’ve been the 50th anniversary of Roe in under two months. As shown in our coverage — the impact of the reversal is real and ongoing.

Here’s our assessment — looking at Roe in review.

Makiya Seminera EDITOR -INCHIEF

Alan Halaly ENGAGEMENT MANAGING EDITOR

Isabella Douglas DIGITAL MANAGING EDITOR

Less than two months away from what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, The Alligator is once again center ing its coverage around the issue of abortion.

Reporting on Roe’s overturn and the effects on the community is his toric, but The Alligator’s own his tory has always been intrinsically tied to abortion coverage — particu larly in its path to independence. For The Alligator’s special edition on Roe, we took a deep dive into the newspaper archives to highlight our story.

More than 51 years ago, before Roe was established as legal prec edent, The Alligator was forced to become independent from the uni versity after then-Editor-in-Chief Ron Sachs and his staff distributed 22,000 lists of abortion referral agencies in the Oct. 6, 1971 edition of the paper, defying the orders of former UF President Stephen C. O’Connell and the law.

“Everyone enthusiastically want ed to participate,” Sachs told The Alligator. “We felt we were doing our part to uphold the First Amend ment and to hopefully attack an un constitutional law.”

Abortion, and the distribution of abortion information, was made illegal in Florida in 1868 — some thing that wouldn’t become legal until more than a century later.

At the time the abortion refer ral list was created by The Alliga tor staff, Sachs didn’t even know it would be illegal to distribute, he wrote in a 2013 edition of The Al ligator reflecting on this history.

To him and the staff, it seemed archaic such a rule was in place, he said. The lists were accompanied by the story “Archaic abortion law gets another test,” authored by Sachs, referring to the limitation on infor mation dissemination.

“In The Alligator newsroom that evening, our entire staff divided up copies of the mimeo sheets in a felo nious conspiracy to stand up for the First Amendment,” he wrote.

The paper’s printer refused to print the lists, so Sachs enlisted the help of then-UF Student Body President Don Middlebrooks, who agreed to mimeograph 22,000 cop ies of the list on Student Govern ment equipment. Then, Sachs and his staff of around 30 people visited newspaper boxes early in the morn ing, stuffing each edition with the resource.

He was arrested at the order of the state attorney’s office the day that paper went out.

O’Connell, who had advised Sachs not to print the list, sought an advisory opinion from Florida’s then-Attorney General Bob Shevin on whether he had grounds to ex ercise prior restraint on The Alliga tor’s coverage — that is, the power to suppress what the paper could print. Shevin’s office said no.

Then, in December 1971, Sachs was tried in court by Alachua Judge Benmont Tench. In a surprise move, Tench struck down the 1868 abor tion law, calling it unconstitutional. Consequently, the state was forced to rewrite the law.

“Facts and truth in journalism and newspapers can make a differ ence — they can cause change to happen,” Sachs said. “By shining a light onto dark issues, by bringing to the public view important things about important issues, change can happen.”

Not long after, O’Connell cut funding from The Alligator, forcing it — or allowing it — to become in dependent.

Now, over 50 years later, The Al ligator remains independent.

The contentious 1971 decision was part of an ongoing effort by The Alligator to cover stories about abortion. During Sachs’ tenure, the paper interviewed women who had legal and illegal abortions and wrote about state abortion laws.

In fact, the Oct. 4, 1971 edition of the paper, originally meant to include the infamous resource list, included stories about abortion on four pages and an editorial about abortion coverage — not too dis similar to The Alligator’s Nov. 28, 2022, special edition on abortion.

“We are in an era where the pen dulum on a lot of issues, including abortion, are swinging with a lot of energy back to the right,” Sachs said. “It’s just the nature of poli tics.”

Sachs’ actions undoubtably marked a turning point in the fre quency and nature of The Alligator’s abortion coverage. Still, prior to the paper’s independence, The Alligator was writing about abortion.

One of the first times the word “abortion” was used in The Alli gator — referring to the deliberate termination of a pregnancy — was in a 1963 story called “Premarital Sex Increasing.” The story warned against sex outside of marriage and commented on the dangers of illegal abortion. A month later, the paper ran a letter to the editor condemn ing the story.

“Through the use of contracep tives, abortions, and other devices, the likelihood of having an unwant ed child is negligible,” the letter read. “Therefore, fear of an illegiti mate child is unwarranted.”

Halima Attah OPINIONS EDITOR

Sachs’ stint in jail was shortlived — he had Jean Chance, a UF journalism professor at the time, and then-husband Chuck Chance, a lawyer, defending him — but the act of defiance got him and the pa per in trouble with O’Connell and the university.

In 1966, the paper reported UF was above average for number of pregnancies at a co-ed school, many of which lead to abortions. The story described hundreds of anxious and worried pregnant students, many of which traveled to South Florida to

receive abortions.

Notably, the paper didn’t discuss abortion in more than passing terms until the late ‘60s. Former Alliga tor Columnist David Morris wrote about this in a 1966 column, “Rec ognize Student Power.”

“Students in the 1960’s are a far different breed than their counter parts of the early 1950’s,” he wrote. “The viewpoint of the young should be considered since the adults have done a pretty poor job in certain major areas (e.g. Civil Rights) and have totally ignored others (e.g. abortion laws).”

And, of course, the paper has covered abortion since becoming independent and since Roe was passed in 1973.

In a 1985 paper, abortion pro tests made the front page of the pa per with then-Alligator staff writer Mickie Anderson’s story “Abortion issue takes to the street.” The story details pro-abortion demonstrators holding signs that read “keep your laws off my body” and “no more wire hangers.”

On June 25, 2022, the day af ter Roe was officially overturned and nearly 40 years after Ander son’s protest story, The Alligator reported 1,000 pro-abortion protes tors marched through the streets of Gainesville.

“Our bodies are ungovernable,” read one sign, photographed in the paper.

On Feb. 6, 2023, Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who has made his antiabortion access stance known, will become the new UF president.

Sasse is described on his official website as an “outspoken pro-life advocate.” His first visit to UF was met with a protest of over 300 stu dents, many of which vehemently disagree with his stance on abor tion.

The Alligator has covered Sasse’s anti-abortion stance and student disapproval since he was announced as a presidential final ist. And, as evident in an editorial callout by the paper asking Sasse to answer reporters’ questions, the pa per will continue to cover this issue.

“The smart, tough and earnest young journalists who have la bored in The Alligator newsroom throughout its history never have considered it a mere classroom or sandbox,” Sachs wrote in his 2013 column. “They have considered it a mission to inquire and to inform and, inevitably, to rankle the pow erful by the newspaper’s very na ture.”

In July, less than two weeks after the Supreme Court voted to over turn Roe, The Alligator staff took once again to the pages of the paper to remind readers where it stands in an editorial.

“We’ve been here before,” it read.

And now, we’re here again.

Ashleigh

‘Life or death’: Gainesville residents recount experiences with abortion

Impact is wide-reaching

By Fernando Figueroa & Heather Bushman Alligator Staff Writers

Editor’s Note: This story contains descriptions of domestic abuse and sexual assault.

When Alexandria Gibson was 19 years old, she became pregnant for the first time.

She initially hid it from her moth er, knowing she’d be forced to get an abortion. Then, when her firstborn child was 2 years old, she conceived again — Gibson was 21. After having four abortions and one miscarriage to twins by the time she was 25, she would go on to become a doula.

“You have to forgive yourself and know that you made the best deci sion for yourself as a human being here in this existence,” Gibson said.

The overturn of Roe v. Wade doesn’t just make sweeping impacts in the political sphere — it has di rectly influenced the lives of those seeking abortions. With Florida next in line to make further restrictions on abortion access after a Republican supermajority won in the midterm

elections, many are left to wonder what the future may bring in terms of reproductive health.

Gibson’s partners didn’t prioritize her health, she said.

While engaging in sexual inter course with her partner at the time, Gibson started hemorrhaging, she said. This led her partner to believe she wasn’t really pregnant.

“He told me he would kill me for lying to him for being pregnant,” she said. “Because obviously, if I was bleeding, I couldn't be pregnant,” she added sarcastically.

After a checkup with a doctor, Gibson learned her partner gave her a sexually transmitted disease that caused the hemorrhaging. He didn’t take the news well.

“He said ‘b—-h, if you keep f—-g with me, I’ll kill your a–s,’” Gibson said.

It took four months in an abusive relationship for her to realize she needed an abortion, she said. As a bartender, Gibson said she relied on her looks for money, and her partner at the time said he wouldn’t support her unless he was sure the baby was his.

The crisis pregnancy center dilemma

Florida OB-GYNs grapple with Roe reversal

Overturn weighs down state’s medical infrastructure

By Melanie Peña Alligator Staff Writer

are no exceptions for rape, incest or non-lethal fetal condi tions.

RECOUNTS

RELIGIOUS

PRESSURE FROM SIRA EMPLOYEES

By Aidan Bush Alligator Staff Writer

A light wooden fence and rounded shrubs separate the local Planned Parenthood from its opponent, Sira Gainesville. But the divide isn’t just physical — it’s ideological.

Jennifer Boylan found herself on Sira’s side of the fence in 2018 as she went seeking help with her pregnancy. Her expe rience was anything but helpful, she said, as employees were quick to pressure her into keeping her pregnancy after an initial ultrasound.

“They told me very specifically that my aborted child would go to heaven, but I would not if I got an abortion,” Boylan said.

Sira advertises itself as a pregnancy testing and counseling clinic, providing screenings and informing potential mothers about their options, according to its website.

However, the center, along with other facilities called cri sis pregnancy centers across the U.S., has faced backlash from residents and former attendees who allege it pushes misleading medical information and religious agendas to pregnant women.

SPORTS/SPECIAL/CUTOUT

Six days.

All it took was six days past Florida’s 15-week abortion ban for board-certified OB-GYN Kristen Witkowski to be forced to send her patient to North Carolina to terminate her pregnancy.

“It was a lot of manpower to figure that out,” Witkowski said. “It's not easy to figure out where to send these patients, even for doctors.”

What pushed her patient beyond the ban’s threshold was somewhat routine in Witkowski’s profession: genetic test ing. After the long process, Witkowski’s patient received the diagnosis that her baby would likely die in two years. However, the lethal anomaly didn’t fit the state’s criteria for receiving an abortion after 15 weeks.

The patient was faced with putting her body through the risk of a full-term pregnancy and introducing her two chil dren to a sibling who's going to die. The family decided to abort the pregnancy.

Witkowski is one of around 2,000 licensed Florida OBGYNs whose profession has been shaken up in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade’s overturn.

Florida’s House Bill 5 banned abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions for maternal life, severe maternal disability and lethal fetal conditions when it took effect July 1. There

Gen Z makes up part of ‘pro-life generation’

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling and the state’s new 15-week ban, many are having to adjust to an influx of out-of-state patients, consider the legal ramifications of their treatments and send patients to other states who can’t be cared for in Florida.

The growing number of obstacles facing OB-GYNs can be mentally exhausting, Witkowski said, especially in a profes sion that requires a close relationship with the patient.

“If I already wasn't living here, I would not come and work here,” she said. “I would stay in a state where I felt like I had all of the options to take care of my patients.”

In her 14 years as an OB-GYN, Witkowski has seen a handful of patients whose health deteriorated quickly, she said. She fears this could become the case more often.

“I think about those patients every single day,” Witkows ki said. “And now, my brain never stops thinking, like shuts off, and stops thinking about the next really sick patient.”

Witkowski didn’t always know what area of medicine she wanted to specialize in. OB-GYN was her last rotation in medical school. Her first day in the OB-GYN specialization was a 24-hour shift filled with deliveries, surgeries and even some emergencies, she said.

What drew her to the career was the mixture of primary care, emergency medicine and surgery. She also enjoyed

Story description finish with comma, pg#

Gator athletes respond to overturn of Roe Florida hasn’t made any changes since the ruling this summer. Read more on pg. 13

Some young people rejoiced when Roe v. Wade was reversed., pg. 5

UF OB-GYN department faces uncertainty post-Roe Health care workers recount newly strained patient interactions, pg. 7v

Rae Riiska // Alligator Staff

Alexandria Gibson, a doula and medspa professional at Little Cottage MedSpa, holds a hand blended herbal remedy for miscarriages, post-abortions and postpartum care Saturday, Nov. 26, 2022. “I want to help women harness their pussy power,” she said.

PATRON

Today’s Weather

How does UF, Santa Fe College provide resources for pregnant students?

UF, SFC don’t perform abortions

By Claire Grunewald Alligator Staff Writer

University reactions to the over turn of Roe v. Wade were wideranging: Few took action to provide abortion medication, while most institutions decided to keep their distance from the conversation.

UF, like most universities, chose not to issue a statement addressing the Supreme Court’s decision. The university had no intention of do ing so, UF spokesperson Cynthia Roldan wrote in an email to The Alligator after the decision.

Although, there were a few in stitutions that commented on the decision.

The University of California and the University of Michigan released statements condemning the decision. Others, largely faithbased private institutions like Lib erty University and the Franciscan University of Steubenville, released statements applauding the deci sion.

Health protocols for UF stu dents seeking abortions remained constant. Nearly six months later, students looking for abortion pro viders can still use the UF Student Health Care Center as a resource.

UF, along with every other Florida university, doesn’t provide abortions, but does supply infor mation on where to get one locally if a student wants that option.

The UF Student Health Care Center provides support and infor mation for pregnant students seek ing options. The clinic provides a variety of resources for students that are meant to be inclusive, said Jocelyn Gravlee, UF SHCC interim director.

The clinic gives information about All Women’s Health Center, located at 1135 NW. 23rd Ave., and Bread and Roses Women’s Health Center, located at 1233 NW. 10th Ave., for students seeking abortions.

The UF SHCC also supplies students with information for anti-abortion organizations that promote other options than termi nating a pregnancy. UF gives infor mation for Community Pregnancy Clinics, located at 1800 W. Univer sity Ave., and Sira, located at 912 NW. 13th St.

Jennifer Donelan, UF SHCC family nurse practitioner, said the clinic informs students about local adoption services, midwives and obstetrician-gynecologists. All of this information is on a resource list given out to students and is up dated over the years, Donelan said.

“Our focus is on prevention of unintended pregnancy and em powering all UF students to stay healthy,” Donelan said.

GatorWell Health Promotion Services provides UF students with

services and information for health and wellness. It offers similar infor mation to pregnant students seek ing options such as abortions.

Samantha Evans, a GatorWell sexual health educator and health promotion specialist, said she’s only met with a few undergradu ate and graduate students over the years looking for counseling on terminating pregnancies. Evans would refer students to either the UF SHCC or local clinics, she said.

In light of the Roe decision, Ev ans had to expand her research on referrals to abortion clinics outside of Gainesville, she said.

As of Nov. 21, Evans said she hasn’t met with a student since July about any issues or concerns regarding pregnancy options like abortion. Despite this, she knew she needed to update her resources to give out to students potentially seeking help, she said.

“I wanted to make sure that I knew as much as I could before the semester started, so that I could re direct people in the best way that I can,” Evans said. “I'm going to be on top of it more so than ever be cause of what has changed.”

Evans has conducted more re search into abortion clinics that are outside of Gainesville, she said, in case there was a higher demand at local clinics that prevented stu dents from being seen.

Just a few miles away, Santa Fe College students have their own pregnancy resources — although smaller than UF.

SFC has a clinic with only one registered nurse. Any student who’s pregnant and seeking op tions in the clinic would be referred to their primary care provider, Gravlee said.

Outside of Florida, some govern ment and educational institutions are attempting to bring abortions

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to students by offering medication abortion — colloquially known as the abortion pill — on campuses to students.

Barnard College, a private women’s college in New York, an nounced in October that it would give students access to abortion pills starting Fall 2023.

Prior to the Supreme Court de cision, California Gov. Gavin New som signed Senate Bill 24 in 2019, which requires California State University and University of Cali fornia campuses to offer abortion pills beginning January 2023.

At the end of July, Massachu setts Gov. Charlie Baker signed House Bill 5090 into law, stating that public colleges and universi ties must legally offer access to medication abortion from school health services or from accessible local resources. The bill took inspi ration from California’s bill.

Other Florida universities, such as Florida State University, have a similar protocol as UF for handling pregnant students. Identical to UF, FSU provides pregnancy testing and referrals to outside clinics, ac cording to its website.

Students looking to book an ap pointment at the UF SHCC can call its number: 352-392-1161. There are same-day services for students with urgent concerns. SFC students can contact their clinic by calling 352-381-3777.

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happen, Boylan said religious conversation quickly escalated.

Due to its proximity to the local Planned Parenthood, some allege Sira and other cen ters across the state actively target women seeking abortion, positioning themselves next to abortion clinics to grab confused patients. This is true across the U.S., too, as many cen ters station themselves near abortion clinics to intercept patrons.

Sira is one of three Gainesville crisis preg nancy centers — or anti-abortion pregnancy clinics — that is still regularly active. Florida alone has under 100 centers according Florida Pregnancy Care Network, in comparison to an estimated 55 abortion-preforming clinics ac cording to Floridians for Reproductive Free dom.

Multiple Sira administrative members were contacted via phone and social media but couldn’t be reached. This included Sira’s main office, Medical Director Richard Brazzel, Executive Director Katherine Gratto, Nurse Manager Bonnie Corona and Director of Cli ent Services Marlene Gardner.

One criticism often levied toward crisis pregnancy centers is they often see funding from the state, while in Florida, abortion cen ters like Planned Parenthood have been de funded since 2016. Florida has funneled $43 million in tax dollars to crisis pregnancy cen ters since 2010, according to an Associated Press report.

In its responses to online reviews claiming it gets tax dollars, Sira claims to be “donorfunded.”

Despite this, Sira received $9,380 in gov ernment grants, according to its 2020 tax re turn forms. The majority of its funding still comes from fundraising events and donors.

Boylan, now a mother, kept a detailed written account of her experience immedi ately after leaving the clinic. While she was initially assured no religious discussion would

Employees told her an abortion could cause her boyfriend to leave, she said. They made abortions sound dangerous and told Boylan she would have to “face God” in the event she had an abortion, she said, despite never stating she was considering one.

Boylan planned on carrying out her preg nancy to term prior to visiting, so she said Sira didn’t influence her decision. But the religious rhetoric from staff about miscarriages she had bothered her.

“Deciding for me that I should think about those pregnancy losses as child losses is a way to increase the pain women feel when that happens,” Boylan said.

A seemingly state-level survey was pro vided to Boylan initially, but toward the end of her visit after the staff had religious discus sion, they told her she didn’t need to fill it out and crossed out her survey, she said.

In Boylan’s survey, the first paragraph prohibits the discussion of religion under the Florida Pregnancy Support Services Program, which funds crisis pregnancy centers across the state, including Sira, according to photos obtained by The Alligator.

“No religious discussion or prayer is per mitted during FPSSP services,” the survey read.

Over time, more people have become vo cal against crisis pregnancy centers, citing a lack of medical staff and general unethical tactics employed by employees.

Elliot Kozuch, a spokesperson for political action committee NARAL Pro-choice Ameri ca, said the centers often lie or misrepresent abortion options and how far along people are in their pregnancy.

“Often these big health clinics offer very little medical services, and sometimes will even intentionally deceive pregnant people into coming into their office,” Kozuch said.

Sira operates as a nonprofit organization,

not a medical center, according to their tax forms. For other similar centers, those coun seling pregnant women can lack medical cer tification. Sira has at least one listed certified doctor in its medical staff.

To provide ultrasounds, centers are re quired to have a licensed sonographer. Sira does perform limited ultrasounds at their fa cility.

Regulations are more lenient for these cen ters as well. Non-licensed centers aren’t held to client regulations normal clinics see under the Health Insurance Portability and Account ability Act. This includes keeping one’s medi cal records private, among other decisions.

HIPAA laws also require regulated clinics like Planned Parenthood to provide alterna tives to abortion, especially in regard to reli

gious objections by patients.

Kai Christmas, regional organizer for Ala chua County’s Planned Parenthood center, said even when crisis pregnancy centers do have medical professionals, there’s no guar antee an attendee is speaking to one.

“Individual centers may have a doctor listed on their website, but we don't actually know if that doctor is even the one that sees patients,” Christmas said.

Read the rest online at alligator.org.

@aidandisto abush@alligator.org

‘The pro-life generation’: Anti-abortion sentiment persists among Gen Z

By Anushka Dakshit & Peyton Harris Alligator Staff Writers

Editor’s note: This story includes mentions of sexual assault.

At age 16, Julia Nolff was raped. Even though she didn’t get pregnant, abortion was never on the table.

“It doesn't treat the rape,” Nolff said. “It just makes her the mother of a dead child.”

Later on, when she attended Missouri State University, Nolff said the anti-abortion club on campus helped her process her trauma.

Nolff, now the 24-year-old mar keting manager of a crisis pregnan cy center in Winter Park, is one of many online activists to promote anti-abortion ideals within Gen Z. Nearly six in ten people ages 18 to 29 support abortion legality, ac cording to the Public Religion Re search Institute.

Nolff also participates in side walk counseling, which entails standing outside of abortion clinics and encouraging people walking inside to abandon the procedure.

As a child, Julia Nolff remem bers asking her mother to take her to anti-abortion Live Action events so she could watch cartoon abor tion procedures.

She learned about abortions in seventh grade, and she began going to Marches for Life and at tended anti-abortion conferences right after.

Nolff was involved in the Lu therans For Life group at her church growing up and said the anti-abortion worldview is shaped from a young age in a Christian household.

Life begins at conception, Nolff said, so the issue of abortion cen ters around human rights.

“In order to be morally consis tent,” Nolff said, “I had to be antiabortion.”

After doing research on abor tion rates in the country, Nolff moved to Florida in 2020 to help reduce Florida’s number — the state has one of the highest rates of abortion in the country. Florida has the fifth-highest rate of abor tions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Some UF students say early exposure to anti-abortion events shaped their involvement with the

movement on campus. Anti-abor tion sentiment has a place at UF, too, as clubs like Students for Life and UF College Republicans lobby student opinion.

Rylee Ballard, a 19-year-old UF civil engineering sophomore, also began supporting the anti-abortion movement at a young age.

Ballard grew up in Pace, Florida — a town that voted 72% Repub lican in the last presidential elec tion. Ballard was raised to align with anti-abortion stances, she said.

On a road trip to Orlando when she was in elementary school, she saw a billboard reading “My heart is still beating,” and then asked her mother what abortion meant. But the meaning didn’t sink in until middle school, when she felt that being anti-abortion was the only acceptable stance.

She began challenging these beliefs in high school when she shifted to a pro-abortion perspec tive. In reflection, Ballard said, a large part of her disdain from the anti-abortion movement came from disliking people at her school who were associated with it.

“I don't think that was a smart idea at all,” she said.

Ballard did more research. And after encountering differing opin

ions at UF, she remains unsure of her stance on abortion going for ward, she said.

Introduced to the concept in middle school, it took 18-year-old UF political science freshman Ga briel Marrero years to formulate his anti-abortion stance. As a member of UF College Republicans, he said he joined to find common ground with others, including those on abortion.

Marrero describes himself as solidly anti-abortion but said ex ceptions to the rule are always necessary.

“Just like many other policies, abortion is just another opinion,” Marrero said. “You really can’t say that somebody has a right answer, a wrong view or a right view.”

Amanda Morningstar, a 23-year-old UF first-year pharmacy student, said she formed her antiabortion views while growing up in the Catholic Church.

“We believe that each person has a body and soul and those shouldn't be separated by human needs,” she said.

Morningstar never received backlash for her views until she started attending UF, she said.

“I definitely received people who didn't agree and came about it kind of in an aggressive way,”

Morningstar said. “They just kind of heard I was pro-life and then disregarded what I believe.”

Morningstar, who is a mem ber of the UF anti-abortion sup port group Students for Life, has attended the March for Life event in Washington D.C. once in high school and has gone every year for the past two years. Morningstar continues to work with Students for Life by helping them collect items to donate to pregnancy clin ics and low-income resources.

After Roe v. Wade was over turned, Morningstar said she was excited.

“You never really feel like you see the results always, but we know that our march and our movement is having an impact,” Morningstar said.

To Morningstar, advocating against abortion is integral to her values.

“I just see the pro-life move ment as one of love because we tried to uphold each person,” Morningstar said. “We're uphold ing people's lives. And you have to do that in a peaceful way.”

@anushkadak adakshit@alligator.org pharris@alligator.org @peytonlharris

Christian Casale contributed to this report.

Rae Riiska // Alligator Staff Sira, a crisis pregnancy center in Gainesville, Florida, is pictured Friday, Oct. 14, 2022.

the idea of being able to build relationships with patients that would last their entire lives.

Three years ago, Witkowski joined a small private practice in Tampa. Now, her small office is one of the only ones accept ing new patients.

“There's only so many patients we can see,” Witkowski said. “Our labor and deliveries are full. I worry about two years from now. We already don't have enough OB-GYNs to take care of the pregnant women we have.”

HB 5 and Roe’s overturn have significantly impacted how quickly she counsels patients and the counseling process. She tries to see her patients as soon as they’re pregnant to start

genetic counseling and go over what their options are.

When HB 5 was going to the Florida House and Senate, Witkowski did everything she could to contact her local state representatives.

Listen to the Turlington

“It's frustrating that nobody asked my opinion,” she said. “I wrote letters. I wrote emails. I even drove to their office to talk with their staff. And nobody would talk with me.”

She felt sick when she heard Roe had been overturned, Wit kowski said.

“It was one of those things that I never felt that that could actually happen, that we could go that backwards,” Witkowski said. “The closer it got, the more this feeling grew in the pit of my stomach, and it made me physically sick.”

The impacts of changing legislation aren’t specific to small er private offices — board-certified OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine specialist Shelly Tien said her Planned Parenthood clinic in Jacksonville also felt the added pressure. Tien also travels to Arizona to provide part-time care.

Southern states expected to restrict further

She wouldn’t be financially stable if she went through with the pregnancy, so she went through with the abortion despite never con sidering one before. The procedure cost $1,100 out-of-pocket because she was already 16 weeks pregnant.

“I had that first abortion and wasn't hap py about the first one,” she said. “But I didn't grieve because I knew that my life was on the line and I had another child I had to take care of.”

Gibson was living in Miami Lakes at the time, and the only clinic that would perform abortions that far along was in Homestead, Florida, she said.

Under Florida’s new 15-week abortion ban, Gibson would have been denied this abortion. The only reasons people can get an abortion af ter 15 weeks is to save the pregnant person’s life, to prevent serious health risks or if the fe tus isn’t expected to survive the pregnancy.

“These timelines they have going on are scary because sometimes situations are life or death,” she said. “And sometimes it took me five months to have the courage to get out of that situation.”

She was involved with another abusive man during her third pregnancy, causing her to keep it a secret for most of the time. She eventually decided to get an abortion procedure when she was 19 weeks pregnant — an illegal procedure under current guidelines — and Gibson said her partner beat her the entire way to and from the abortion clinic.

Florida has reported 61,956 abortions this year so far, of which 672 were performed on Alachua County residents, according to the Agency for Health Care Administration. There have also been 4,780 reported abortions from out-of-state residents in 2022, which nears the 4,873 abortions on out-of-state residents in 2021.

As Southern states continue to ban abor tions, the number of non-Florida residents

seeking abortions in the state could grow. There was a 3% increase in patients traveling out-of-state to receive abortion care between 2011 and 2020, according to a report by the Guttmacher Institute.

There are 54 licensed OB-GYN physicians in Alachua County, according to the Florida De partment of Health. The county only has two abortion clinics — Bread & Roses Women's Health Center and All Women's Health Center of Gainesville — though not all OB-GYNs per form the procedure.

Gibson wanted to expand on women’s health access in the county, and after two more abortions at 24 and 25 years old, as well as a double miscarriage of twins, she started the Goddess Project, a local feminine wellness spa.

A woman’s reproductive system is neglect ed from an early age, she said. A lack of access to sanitary products, menstrual pain, bloating and sexual assault can all lead to unresolved trauma in a woman’s future, Gibson said.

She’s now a licensed esthetician with 11 years of experience, and she has a bachelor’s degree in alternative medicine. Gibson is also a reiki practitioner and a certified doula, which is a professional labor assistant who will provide physical and emotional support to women dur ing and after birth.

Gibson works with other women to move past those sexual traumas by balancing chakras, doing shadow work, holding classes and work shops and performing yoni steamings, which is a method of cleansing and relieving pain by squatting over steaming herbal waters. In a lot of cases, this kind of trauma prevents women from being sexually liberated, she said.

“We hold space and hold workshops be cause women need to talk about these things,” she said. “They need to know that there are ways to heal and move past and stop those generational consequences.”

Gibson’s wellness spa closed its physical location in November, but she hopes this will open up time to work on delivering babies and working with women.

But the reversal of Roe affects more than

just women.

Tien wasn’t surprised when she heard Roe had been over turned, she said, because high-risk pregnancies and abortion had been on her mind every moment of the last nearly 15 years.

The loss of the constitutional right to abortion had been something she and her colleagues had feared for some time.

By Stephan Chamberlin Alligator Staff Writer

We all know the walk through Turlington Plaza. It’s a veri table minefield of distractions. People handing out pamphlets, students trying to get you to join their clubs, doughnut sales for the nexus of evil: the Alachua County Humane Society. But there are also those who have a less-than-appealing message. Some of the Turlington heralds preach a very religious message of fire and brimstone, and some go way overboard on the rheto ric. The next time you walk through Turlington try to keep an open mind and listen to what they’ve got to say.

Christianity’s place atheistic.

“When the news came, it was very, very devastating,” she said. “The impact that we have seen since that time has, unfor tunately, kind of confirmed our fears.”

Since Roe was overturned, Tien and other health care staff at Planned Parenthood have expanded their services to accom modate the number of patients they’re seeing, including pa tients who traveled from out of the state.

Read the rest online at alligator.org.

@MelanieBombino_ mpena@alligator.org

This thinking comes from a recent experience I had walking through the Plaza of the Americas, another one of our beloved free speech zones on campus. A man in a Yankees baseball cap approached me. He wanted to talk to me about if I had given Jesus Christ a chance to enter my life. Normally, that would be my cue to say something like, “Sorry, I’m late for class, I gotta go,” or some other half-hearted utterance to excuse myself. But I wanted to hear what the man had to say. So, I introduced myself, got his name (Freddy, by the way) and we struck up a conversation about science, evil, omnipotence, forgiveness and

knew he was transgender from a young age, he figured he might be gay instead.

As a young queer person, O’Hanlon said he was bullied by both students and teachers. At that age, these experiences are much scarier be cause children are impressionable and afraid of what others might think, he said. This leads to higher rates of suicide among trans people who don’t receive the support they need, he added.

I learned quite sonal struggles. I We bonded over from going to church many of the same neighborly. That was all a turn for the hellish. make a best effort with Freddy, up sient chats, I asked an Eagle Scout, munion, confirmation slightest, tried to if I hadn’t accepted heaven. I probed ther would my mother, in the Amazon. world without a It was at that him out, and I did

“I want them to know that there's some one who has lived their experience,” O’Hanlon said. “And I came out the other side just fine.”

At the time, he didn’t feel comfortable an nouncing his abortion to the world and was still coming to terms with his gender identity. In 2016, he came out as transgender.

O’Hanlon now fears for the future of trans gender teens who might be in similar situations to his when he was a teen, he said.

“Trans people are the punching bag du jour for our current governor,” he said.

Jameson O’Hanlon, a 54-year-old Ameri can Express customer care professional and a transgender man, also tackled the unexpected and often disorienting experience of needing an abortion at the age of 17. At that age, he didn’t want a child, and he didn’t connect with the female parts of his body.

“Motherhood was never going to be a real goal for me,” he said.

O’Hanlon views recent legislation that threatens bodily autonomy as justification for unapologetic and aggressive steps, he said. The Democratic Party has been on the defensive for decades, O’Hanson said.

He’s sick of it, he said, and people need to go on the offense instead of trying not to hurt anybody’s feelings.

Membership is open to students, faculty and sta of the University of Florida, UF

He didn’t waste any time in getting the abor tion, he said. He was around eight weeks preg nant when he scheduled his procedure with Gainesville’s Planned Parenthood clinic, which no longer provides abortion services. He never regretted the decision, nor did it haunt him, he said.

A week later, O’Hanlon was walking past the Gainesville Courthouse where he encoun tered a group of anti-abortion protesters. He confronted them, he said, and they didn’t know how to react.

This all happened in 1985, during O’Hanlon’s first year living on his own. He didn’t have a supportive atmosphere at home, so he decided to take off, he said. Although he

“This is the way that it works now,” O’Hanlon said. “There is no waiting around to see what anybody is going to give us. [They’re] not gonna give us anything. We have to earn everything.”

Today’s fight for reproductive rights is fa miliar territory for Jane Spear, who watched the fallout of the original Roe ruling in 1973. The 78-year-old Gainesville resident and activist saw firsthand how abortion activists organized for reproductive rights nationwide in one of the first public conflicts on the topic.

Read the rest online at alligator.org.

@fernfigue @hmb_1013

ffigeroua@alligator.org hbushman@alligator.org

Rae Riiska // Alligator Staff

Jane Spear, head of the Gainesville PFLAG chapter, talks about her history as an abortion activist at her home Saturday, Nov 26, 2022.

What’s next for UF’s Plan B vending machines?

VENDING MACHINES ARE YET TO BE ADDED

By Alissa Gary Alligator Staff Writer

Amid their usual Summer ses sion, UF student senators Faith Cor bett (Change-District C), Joe Andre oli and Ryan Athay were confronted with urgent public comments from students asking for reproductive health resources. The senators were quick to step in.

About a month after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Orga nization decision removing federal protections for abortion, Student Senate passed a bipartisan resolution authored by the trio addressing the need for 24-hour emergency contra ception on campus.

The resolution proposed morn ing-after pills be available through outdoor vending machines located in high-traffic areas of campus, includ ing inside Newell Hall, the Turling ton Breezeway, the McCarty Breeze way and outside The Hub. The resolution passed with 67 yes votes, one no vote and one abstention.

But those vending machines are still yet to be installed.

“Students want resources that are going to be accessible to them and known to them,” Corbett said. “That’s the context in which this leg islation was heard.”

While Senate acknowledged and approved the project, resolutions are inherently non-binding. This means the legislation didn’t include a solidi fied plan on how or when vending

machines will become available.

But Corbett, the only of the three original authors to run and win re election this Fall, said she’s ready to pursue the project this term.

“There’s so many resources on campus that students feel like they kind of should be given as the bare minimum, but that we have to con tinue to fight for,” she said. “And I think that contraception is turning into one of those things as well.”

While unconventional, the reso lution wasn’t the first of its kind: In March, Boston University opened its first Plan B vending machine, selling the pills at a discounted rate of $7.25 each — as opposed to the $40 to $50 pharmacy price range.

The student government at the University of Texas at Austin passed

a similar resolution in April, asking for vending machines to sell morn ing-after pills at $10 or less.

The idea isn’t new to UF either. The Gainesville chapter of National Women’s Liberation, a women’s rights organization, paired with SG to make vending machines a real ity in 2018. But the idea failed in the legislative process and wasn’t rein troduced for another four years.

With the Dobbs decision limiting abortion access nationally, as well as Florida’s 15-week abortion ban, the resolution’s authors noticed their constituents wanted and needed easier access to emergency contra ception.

Andreoli, who represented the graduate seat during his term, said he worried about how the decisions

would affect graduate assistants in particular. Graduate salaries often don’t cover the cost of living for one person, he said, much less the costs of having a child.

“I thought about all of the gradu ate students in my department and the departments I’ve worked with,” he said. “What are they going to do if now they are going to be forced to have a child?”

So, the authors revived and up dated the 2018 resolution.

Aside from addressing recent judicial decisions, the new resolu tion took into consideration campus maps and population, which were foundational to choosing vending machines’ locations.

Having a master’s degree in geog raphy, Andreoli said he was known in Senate as the “geography guy” — he often analyzed maps in the cham ber. So when the question turned to placing vending machines, Corbett turned to Andreoli for help choosing the best high-traffic areas.

“I encourage senators who are serving and those senators who as sumed their seats due to the recent election spend a lot of time research ing because there’s a lot of high quality data available to improve the legislation,” Andreoli said. “You just have to find it.”

It mattered to Corbett and Andre oli that vending machines be avail able outdoors so students could ac cess them 24-hours a day. Although the on-campus wellness center sells discounted morning-after pills, it’s closed for extended periods on weekends and over Summer.

Athay, a Gator senator at the time,

responded to Andreoli’s request for additional authors and helped write the resolution.

The delay on the project, Corbett said, was due to then-imminent Fall SG elections. Given she was on the ballot for reelection, she didn’t want to start the project without the con firmation she’d be in Senate to finish it.

“It’s a very exciting opportunity to be able to work on this,” she said. “But I think it would mean nothing to me if I wasn’t able to do it appro priately and with the purpose of ac tually seeing it completed.”

Having won reelection, Corbett is formally pursuing the project. Al though Athay and Andreoli are no longer senators, Corbett said she’s looking for committed colleagues in the Change caucus.

Her first step in completing the project is doing more research, she said. Her second is to find alterna tive routes for funding, including grants and fundraising — SG made it clear during the approval process it wouldn’t financially support the project, Corbett said.

“It’s going to be a lot of revisiting old plans, but also remodeling them to a different time, a different space and a different context,” she said.

Although she provided no time line for the project, Corbett empha sized she would be reaching out to groups for help within the coming weeks.

“I think the importance of advo cacy for resources is you shouldn’t be doing it selfishly,” she said.

“My motivation is definitely for women on campus who have been in an emergency.”

@AlissaGary1 agary@alligator.org

What changing abortion laws mean for UF’s OB-GYN department

BIGGEST CONCERN IS UNCERTAINTY

By Siena Duncan Alligator Staff Writer

Alexandra Monaco and her colleagues hur ried to get an abortion approved for a pregnant patient in September. The patient’s doctor had recently discovered her baby had a fetal anom aly encephalocele, where one in five babies are born alive.

The patient was 14 weeks along. With Flori da’s 15-week abortion ban, it was a race against the clock.

“We not only had to support her through the emotional turmoil that she’s going through but then also had to help the patient go through these logistical barriers,” Monaco said.

Situations like these have started to increase for UF health care workers like Monaco, a clini cal assistant professor with the obstetrics and gynecology department.

Between the overturn of Roe v. Wade and Florida enacting new constraints on abortion, UF OB-GYNs have experienced firsthand some of the effects on their ability to provide care for their patients. Despite abortion procedures being scarce in medical school curriculum any way, Florida’s encroaching restrictions on abor tions came as a disappointment to Monaco, she said.

“We expected that this was coming,” she said. “But once it happened, it was definitely devastating for us as physicians and knowing what our patients will have to go through.”

With a continually changing landscape on abortion access in the state, many medical school OB-GYN departments at universities like UF are left to learn how to navigate it.

The 24-hour waiting period rule has been one aspect of Florida’s abortion laws that train ing OB-GYNs have learned to work under. It requires patients requesting an abortion to have a counseling appointment reviewing materials about alternative options a full day before the procedure. This rule was signed into law in 2015 but was caught up in legal battles until a judge upheld the law last April.

In addition to the 24-hour law, Florida also enacted its 15-week abortion ban, which allows for three exceptions after 15 weeks: risk to the pregnant person’s life, risk of serious injury or in the presence of fetal abnormalities that would result in “death upon birth.” It doesn’t allow exceptions for a pregnancy conceived through rape or incest.

After Florida legislative elections unveiled a Republican supermajority in the Florida House and Senate, incoming Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, said she would consider a 12-week ban. However, Passidomo also wants rape and incest exceptions, she said.

Monaco trains OB-GYN residents at UF, meaning she observes and instructs them in a hospital environment. The UF residency pro gram gives students experience with proce dures like hysterectomies and pelvic exams, as well as managing labor and delivery for both high-risk and low-risk pregnancies. The cur riculum doesn’t require experience with abor tions, although she often takes it upon herself to keep those students informed on what’s hap pening with state laws, she said.

Discussions with her colleagues over con cerns about residents being unable to learn the skills needed to perform an abortion with these stricter laws have heightened, Monaco said. However, this concern isn’t a new one.

A Stanford University study published in 2020, before Roe was overturned, found stan dardized abortion training was scarce in Ameri can medical schools. There was concern about the availability of abortion training back when OB-GYN department chair John Smulian was in medical school during the 1980s, he said.

Even before the Florida laws were enacted, the UF OB-GYN department didn’t offer elec tive abortions — abortions performed for rea sons outside of miscarriages and other medical conditions like fetal anomalies.

Because of this, Smulian thinks that in terms of education, the department will remain mostly unaffected by new legislation, he said. Techniques involved in late-term abortions are also used for procedures like cesarean sections, which OB-GYN residents do get experience with at UF.

“They’re just procedures that are tools,” he said. “The fact that one might be applied in the realm of abortion doesn’t mean you don’t learn that technique.”

The main change brought about by the overturning of Roe has caused an increase in the amount of uncertainty felt by UF OB-GYN faculty, Smulian said. There’s a need for flex ibility, since new legislation could be proposed to police abortions more thoroughly, he said, and UF needs to stay tightly within those guide lines.

“This is going to evolve,” he said. “You can count in months, or even days, the duration of some of these [laws].”

These increasing state restrictions also make abortions that need to happen quickly, like the patient with the sudden fetal anomaly, difficult to perform, Monaco said.

Finding time to schedule a counseling ap

pointment and then schedule the abortion can sometimes take more than a week. But while Monaco was trying her best to speed through the process, the patient was also going through emotional stress as well — the pregnancy had been highly desired, Monaco said.

That abortion was a heavy decision.

Monaco feels the added weight of legal bar riers isn’t something good for patients or medi cal students preparing to enter the world of health care, she said.

“It’s really difficult to watch the patients go through,” she said. “And patients don’t deserve that.”

Monaco aligns with the abortion rights movement. Working as an OB-GYN in a postRoe world can be frustrating, she said. But one of the reasons she said she chose UF as the place to start her medical career is due to comparatively less restrictive laws than other places.

She completed her residency at the Univer sity of Tennessee in 2020, where state law now bans abortion at all stages of pregnancy. She didn’t want to work somewhere she’d have to recommend patients options out of state, she said. Now she’s seeing out-of-state patients from places like Alabama, with a total ban, and Georgia, with a six-week ban.

“Realistically, patients need this care,” she said. “They will come in bleeding with a mis carriage, they will come in with an infection and need to have a pregnancy removed.”

Read the rest online at alligator.org.

Minca Davis // Alligator Staff

In post-Roe Florida, Alachua County sex education lags in public schools

ALACHUA COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS LOOKS TO UPDATE CURRICULUM

By Sophia Bailly Alligator Staff Writer

In fifth grade, Ellie Mordujovich received her only formal sex education. She remembers being separated from her male peers to learn about female anatomy and the menstrual cycle — although there was no discussion of sex in the one-time class.

“I have no idea what the boys learned,” Mor dujovich said. “They never really brought up ac tual sex itself and how to stay protected. I don’t remember anything about that.”

Now a 17-year-old junior at Buchholz High SchooI, she’s had no further formal lessons on sex education, she said.

“I definitely think we should have another course in high school,” she said. “In fifth grade, you’re not really thinking about that.”

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion access, one topic being revisited to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections across the country is sex education.

In a classroom of 30 Florida high schoolers, statistically eight are routinely sexually active and four have had sex at least once, data from the 2015 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows.

Comprehensive sex education — defined by Guttmacher Institute as material that covers the social, emotional, physical and biological as pects of sexuality and relationships — should begin in elementary school, according to the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Florida law doesn’t require schools to teach sex education, but health-related curriculum must address teenage pregnancy.

Alachua parents and students report a lack ing sex education within Alachua County Public Schools; however, after 10 years of a relatively stagnant curriculum, ACPS specialists are revis iting the standards to hopefully revamp them soon.

In Florida, state statutes require public schools to incorporate topics such as nutrition, personal health, prevention and control of dis ease and substance use into their health edu cation. In grades seven through 12, teen dating violence should be addressed. There’s no direct mention of sex education in the statute’s health

section.

In grades six through 12, promoting sexual abstinence is the expected standard, according to the Florida statutes. For instructional ma terials used to teach reproductive health, the content must be annually approved in a public meeting of the district’s school board.

ACPS teaches students about puberty, per sonal health and how to handle issues such as peer pressure and dating violence. Sex-educa tion-related materials are taught in fifth and sev enth grade.

Some students’ recollection of their sex edu cation didn’t come from their time in school — it came from conversations with their parents.

Jada Monroe, a 17-year-old Buchholz High School senior, said her parents used the “birds and the bees” metaphor to explain sexual repro duction. These conversations ended at school, she said.

“When you’re going to school, your parents, your mom or whoever your guardian is tells you ‘Oh, this is going to happen eventually,’” Mon roe said. “But in school specifically, it was just videos.”

Other students agree their sex education hasn’t been thorough.

Quin Richmond, a 16-year-old Buchholz High sophomore, said he recalls the educational videos his classmates watched seeming outdat ed. The videos didn’t discuss sexuality or sexual relationships.

“They can definitely teach more about the protection aspect and then also just basic rela tionship safety stuff,” Richmond said.

Lisa Sauberan, ACPS’ science curriculum specialist, said the county is updating its human growth and development curriculum with re vised language because of new state legislation.

The curriculum has always been accessible for ACPS parents to review as the district’s web site includes a link for resource materials, Sau beran said.

Parents can complete an exemption form for reproductive health and disease education les sons.

Updating the current curriculum is a wel come change for some community members who claim ACPS sex education doesn’t go far enough.

Jessica Grobman, a 28-year-old UF alumna and Miami-Dade public defender who was born HIV-positive, said she wished STDs were in cluded in high school sex education curriculum.

Being HIV-positive had a limited impact on

her childhood, Grobman said, aside from hav ing to take five to seven pills every day. But when she entered high school, Grobman de cided students needed to learn about HIV and general sex education.

“Puberty is going to come for everyone,” Grobman said. “Every person needs to know about their body and how it works.”

Sex education opens up a wider conversa tion to keep teenagers safe as they start becom ing sexually active, Grobman said.

“Litigating and then legislating people’s bod ies is just another way to have some form of control, but this is actually incredibly detrimen tal,” Grobman said.

Jyoti Parmar, a Gainesville resident whose 15-year-old child attends Eastside High as a sophomore, said the concept of consent isn’t discussed enough in the sex education curricu lum.

“We have discussed consent at home,” Par mar said. “Every child should know how to say ‘no,’ what the boundaries are and what basic human respect demands of them.”

Parental input into curriculum has become heightened within the past year with one recent law shaking up the landscape on sex education: the Parental Rights in Education Act, known colloquially as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The law, which took effect July 1, allows parents to determine what topics related to gender and sexuality their children can be exposed to.

Faith integral to views on abortion post-Roe

JEWISH, MUSLIM RESIDENTS FEEL LEFT OUT

By Alexa Herrera Alligator Staff Writer

Stepping off the plane, Jillian Melinek’s phone was spammed with notifications: Roe v. Wade overturned. Her stomach and heart dropped, and she immediately thought of her faith.

The reversal contradicts her faith as a Jewish woman — the life of the mother is valued above everything, and life doesn’t begin at concep tion. Along with thoughts about what this meant for her religious practices, her mind strayed to other anxieties.

“I had to think: Did I remember to take my birth control yesterday?” she said.

Religion is often thought of as a reason to be anti-abortion, but views on the matter vary widely among different doctrines. Even for people within the same religious

groups who consider themselves devout, their perspectives on abor tion aren’t a monolith.

Melinek, a Jewish 21-year-old UF psychology and women’s studies senior, said she attributes her prochoice stance to her faith, which primarily values the well-being of the mother’s life. A fetus is not con sidered a full human being, accord ing to the Torah and Jewish law.

In Florida, a 15-week abortion ban was implemented July 1 — when it immediately faced protest and legal challenges due to alleged violations of privacy and religious freedom.

Three rabbis, two reverends and a Buddhist lama from across Florida each filed separate lawsuits against the state over its ban for breaching their right to religious freedom. An other lawsuit from a South Florida synagogue over the 15-week abor tion ban was filed in June.

Melinek said she was happy the synagogue decided to sue Florida — it helped her solidify her decision about supporting abortion rights.

Most Jewish people believe if the mother’s life is at risk during preg nancy, then they should opt to save the mother through an abortion, Melinek said. It ultimately depends on how conservative one is within Judaism, she said.

Life doesn’t begin at concep tion for many Jewish people, Me linek said, which falls at odds with many other anti-abortion, religious people.

In Judaism, under normal cir cumstances, it’s considered wrong to get an abortion depending on the stage of pregnancy. Before six months of pregnancy, abortion can be acceptable when the health of the mother is jeopardized, but a rabbi should be consulted.

In Islam, abortion is a compli cated topic that also depends on how conservative the person is, said Saeed Khan, a 78-year-old Muslim Gainesville resident.

The acceptance of abortion de pends on which school of thought a person follows, Khan said.

The retired UF medicine profes

Namari Lock // Alligator Staff

ACPS has taken the law into account, but not much is expected to change, Sauberan said.

“We definitely have to be mindful,” Sau beran said. “It’s not necessarily going to impact what we teach because what we’re teaching is aligned to the required instruction.”

The process of updating the curriculum will remain transparent and accessible to parents and community members, Sauberan said.

“We just need to make sure that our human growth and development meets the letter to the laws so that there are no repercussions to a teacher or a district for violating this legisla tion,” Sauberan said.

Outside of schools, some people look to or ganizations like Planned Parenthood for help teaching sex education.

Kai Christmas, a 26-year-old regional orga nizer for Planned Parenthood, said many mis understand what sex education is.

Public schools can decide against having Planned Parenthood provide sex education-re lated resources to students, Christmas said. But following the overturn of Roe, addressing sex education is critical.

“What I definitely know is that the state of sex education in Florida is in a bit of a crisis,” Christmas said.

@sophia_bailly sbailly@alligator.org

sor said there are varied views from different Islamic branches of Islam that have their own Qur’anic inter pretation.

“The states are not supposed to favor one religion over another,” he said. “But, what they are doing is following one very Christian inter pretation of when life begins.”

Muslim people heavily rely on what the circumstances are to make a decision regarding abortion, he said. The life of the mother has ut most importance, he said, so if her life is in jeopardy, abortion can be acceptable.

Getting an abortion also depends on how many days have passed since conception. In the first 120 days after conception, Muslims consider the fetus to be a physical entity without a soul, so abortion is acceptable, Kahn said. But, after 120 days, it has a soul and abortion is harder to justify.

There are exceptions for situa tions such as rape or a fetal anoma ly, he added.

In reflecting on Roe’s overturn, Kahn said he found the decision to be a dangerous move by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It opens a Pandora’s box as well,” he said.

The court didn’t follow prec edent in the case, Kahn said, and he fears other human rights deci sions will be overturned regarding racism.

Christianity is no different in terms of the variety of beliefs fol lowers can have on abortion. Be cause there are so many Christian denominations, a single answer to whether abortion is acceptable is hard to pinpoint.

Kolby Golliher is a pastor at Wesley United Methodist Church in Gainesville who supports abor tion rights, but he said there are a diverse range of beliefs about abor tion within the Methodist commu nity.

Traditionally, the Methodist opinion claims abortion isn’t ac ceptable unless there are dangerous health conditions, according to the United Methodist Church.

Read the rest online at alligator.org.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2022

www.alligator.org/section/the_avenue

ART EXHIBITED AT GAINESVILLE FINE ARTS ASSOCIATION

By Luna Boales Avenue Staff Writer

The history of abortion access in the United States is tinged with re sistance. What now can sometimes be accomplished through a pill was once reliant on wire hangers and knitting needles — procedures that often unfolded behind closed doors.

Two Gainesville residents have shone a spotlight on this storied his tory, but instead of expressing their outrage through organized protest, they’ve turned toward a different medium: art.

Roe v. Wade was overturned June 24 in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization deci sion, reversing the 50-year federal protection of abortions and leav ing abortion access in the hands of states’ laws. Following the court ruling, two Gainesville artists used painting and sculpture work as an outlet for their post-Roe protest.

Charlotte Newman, a 71-year-old activist and conceptual artist, is one of these artists.

“Women should be able to de cide when and if they want to have a family,” she said. “ And without that basic protection to just control when and if you’ll have children has ramifications throughout women’s abilities to live an autonomous life.”

Most of her pieces, Newman said, tend to have a political message be hind them. She has previously done war pieces on Operation Desert Storm and other feminist pieces un related to abortion rights. Abortion rights has been one of the newest themes in her collection, as they’re important to her because women aren’t truly free in a society without the ability to control reproduction, she said.

Newman produced three pieces inspired by the overturn of Roe — two of which were showcased at a Gainesville Fine Arts Association ex hibition in August.

“The Supreme Court 2022,” the first piece exhibited by the GFAA, features nine black hangers, one for each member of the Supreme Court. She chose hangers as the focal point of the piece because they’re a com monly used instrument for unsafe, at-home abortions and a symbol of the abortion rights movement, New man said.

“The Supreme Court has now de cided to restrict reproductive health care, and we’ve gone backwards,” she said. “That symbol, I think, reso nates with women who remember the time before Roe v. Wade.”

She also left postcards depicting “The Supreme Court 2022” around the Civic Media Center and at the GFAA for people to pick up and learn more, she said.

The second of Newman’s GFAAexhibited pieces is “Women’s Repro ductive Health 2022.” The sculpture

is composed of nine 6-foot metal spikes resembling knitting needles — one for each member of the Su preme Court members who voted on Dobbs. A pink string drapes down and in between the needles.

Knitting needles are another in strument used to perform illegal abortions, Newman said. The pink string, she said, represents the deli cacy of a woman’s life — and how it can be completely altered by the Supreme Court ruling.

“I think that one is a little more in your face, a little more violent,” Newman said. “But it does represent what happens: People will die be cause of the Dobbs decision.”

Stephanie Birch, a 34-year-old mixed media artist, has been making protest art since 2020. Throughout June and July, her piece “Swallow the Goddamn Pill” was on display at the GFAA.

At more than 7 feet tall, the

Local artists channel rage over Roe through their craft Gainesville punk rock band Antagonizör tackles abortion access

piece featured two pill-shaped poster board cutouts attached to a wiffle bat. The text on the pills reads: “Say yes to safe abortions! I did.” It also prompts people to mark the pill if they had an abortion themselves or assisted someone have one.

The piece, she said, was to dis play she personally had an abortion, as did many other nameless indi viduals. It was a way of showing, she said, abortion isn’t a taboo thing, and she figured her piece would en courage people to talk about abor tion more openly.

“The message I was trying to get across was that I mean, I’m here, I’m in support of this safe medical proce dure,” she said. “I’ve had one and I am calling on you folks in the com munity.”

The piece was originally created for the Bans Off Our Bodies march, which took place in May, Birch said, where she carried the sign along with markers. Fellow protestors who previously had an abortion or knew someone who did marked the pill.

It’s a call for action too, Birch said. The piece was made with the intention to encourage people to come forward if they had an abor tion or assisted someone in getting one and show solidarity to get rid of the stigma around abortions, she added.

“In the eyes of a lot of people — a lot of our neighbors — we are crimi nals by virtue of having this very important and necessary medical procedure,” Birch said.

@LunaBoales lboales@thealligator.org

By Averi Kremposky Avenue Staff Writer

If the public tunes out the conversation on abortion, local three-piece punk rock band An tagonizör will bring it to them through the mu sic they play.

Inspired by classic D-beat bands like Dis charge and Anti Cimex, musicians Tzu-wei Peng, Sarah Von Nacht and Michelle Nuñez confide in the punk genre’s ability to bridge music and activism — tackling issues such as Florida’s conservative politics and, more re cently, the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Unlike other mediums of expression, music is an outlet that begs to be listened to — and Peng doesn’t take that for granted.

“On Facebook, your friends have different views, and if you talk about it too much, your

Keep up with the Avenue on Twitter.

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friend can just silence you,” Peng, 30, said. “But in music, you just don’t care.”

The group originally met through mutual friends in Orlando, where one fateful jam ses sion sealed the deal on the punk-rock triad. Together, they realized music could be fun, ca thartic and persuasive.

Gainesville boasts its own rich punk rock scene, drawing thousands each year to FEST, an underground punk rock and pop-punk mu sic festival that recently celebrated its 20th an niversary.

Since moving to the city two years ago, Peng started pursuing her second bachelor’s degree in industrial biotechnology at Santa Fe College, Von Nacht, 30, became an entomology graduate student at UF and Nuñez, 34, started working for the city as a landscaper. But the trio doesn’t let their busy schedules obstruct them from being the intersection of rock and repro

ductive rights.

Punk music sits apart from other music genres due to its politically charged lyrics and its historical inclination to tackle taboo top ics — manifesting in songs like “God Save the Queen” by 1970s British punk band the Sex Pis tols and “American Idiot” by Green Day.

Antagnizör, too, goes beyond just dangling its feet over this cliff of a custom — instead, leaping completely into the chasm of activism.

Made up of three women, the band has been personally affected by the June overturn of Roe v. Wade, and Peng, Von Nacht and Nu ñez haven’t shied away from expressing their discontent through song.

“It’s important because it is a life or death is sue for women,” Von Nacht said. “Because for some women, getting pregnant is kind of like a death sentence.”

Birmkire’s sentiments are translated into an unabashed ballad the musician wrote over the summer while in Europe. The song, called “My

Choice,” expands on her repugnance toward male opinions about abortion rights and the hypocrisy of the anti-abortion agenda, she said.

The song opens with the lyrics “It fills me with rage that we live in an age where a man gets to choose what happens in my womb” and culminates in a chorus that states “It is not mur der to kill the unborn, I don’t understand why this country’s so torn. Why should I care about a clump of cells? You’re not my god, you can’t send me to hell.”

The words on paper gain new life when Von Nacht’s classic raspy yell compliments Peng’s salient bass line and Nuñez’s energetic drum beat — almost as if the trio was feeling every emotion simultaneously.

alligator.org/section/the_avenue.

Seminoles hand Gators one final loss Florida tied the game in the fourth quarter but couldn’t close out a win. Read more on pg. 13. Scan to follow the Avenue on Spotify

Sophia Abolfathi // Alligator Staff

Charlotte Newman and her protest piece “Women’s Reproductive Health 2022,” which features nine steel knitting needles and a pink string representing the fragility of women’s rights in the Supreme Court’s hands, are pictured Saturday, Nov. 19, 2022.

www.alligator.org/section/opinions

Understanding abortion

This June, the U.S. Supreme Court officially reversed Roe v. Wade: the case responsible for upholding Americans’ abortion rights. While Roe v. Wade’s re versal has made abortion a highly discussed topic, it’s also increased the spread of misinformation. Given the current political climate, it’s important that we surround ourselves with the facts about abortion.

What is an abortion?

An abortion is a pregnancy termination. Abortion is an all-encompassing term that refers to either induced or spontaneous situations. An induced abortion refers to in tentionally ending a pregnancy. A spontaneous abortion refers to an unintentional miscarriage. Either of these may be completed by medications or a procedure.

What does an abortion look like?

Medications can be used to end a pregnancy or may be used to help someone expel a miscarriage from the uterus. The medications used are usually administered in a two-step process. The first medication stops hormones from supplying the inside lining of the uterus that holds the pregnancy. Usually, people don’t notice many effects after this first pill, but occasionally, patients experience some bleeding. The second medication is taken 24 to 72 hours after the first medication and causes the cervix to soften and the uterus to contract to expel the pregnancy. Usually, patients experience cramping and bleeding with

Bigger than Roe. v Wade

Iwas fortunate enough to be raised in a household where abortion was always seen as health care. It was also con sidered something that could be taken for granted.

Growing up in Connecticut — a generally blue state — I had always seen Roe v. Wade as the rightful law of the land. Largely due to our race and class background, my family and I didn’t consider how reproductive rights weren’t granted equally to all people within our nation’s borders, or seriously consider the possibility of it being overturned. The overturn of Roe alarms me both abstract ly and materially.

Abstractly, it demonstrates the mask-off ap proach many legislators and politicians have taken regarding their discriminatory beliefs. They no longer pretend to have any respect for the autonomy of people who can repro duce. There’s no facade of separation be tween church and state or legitimacy given to the struggles and legal processes which led to Roe’s original ruling 50 years ago.

Materially, the overturn of Roe scares me as someone who can reproduce and doesn’t want to. I have used my autonomy to make decisions about sex that render abortion a necessary option for me.

For example, my struggles with mental illness make hormone-altering birth control methods risky and even dangerous. My weight lowers the efficacy of over-the-counter contraceptive Plan B. I have to call my doctor and get a pre scription in order to access the more effective Ella brand morning after pill. The possibility of becoming pregnant is very real for me. I need to know I can get an abortion if I need one.

Fortunately, I come from a family with the financial resources and belief systems to sup

in about four hours of taking the sec ond medication. All medications have risks, but this combination has been shown to be very safe by many re search studies. Patients are counseled about how much bleeding is normal and what symptoms would require someone to be seen by a medical pro vider.

pregnant person’s life is at risk. For example, if a preg nant person has a heavy amount of bleeding, they may require the pregnancy be removed to save their life. An other example is an infection of the uterus during preg nancy, which is rare, but may become so severe that the pregnancy would have to be removed in order to stop the infection from worsening.

Alexandra

E. Monaco opinions@alligator.org

During the first trimester, some individuals choose a procedure to end a pregnancy called a suction dila tion and curettage. This can be performed while the pa tient is awake with local anesthesia, moderately sedated or all the way asleep with general anesthesia. Anesthesia options depend on where the patient receives care, what the facility can provide and the patient’s health problems. During the procedure, suction is used to remove the preg nancy from the uterus. All medical procedures have risks, but this procedure is overall very safe.

In the second trimester, an abortion can also be per formed using medications or a procedure. For a second trimester medical abortion, a patient would be admitted to the hospital to receive medications and be monitored until the pregnancy is expelled. After 14 weeks, if a pa tient elects for a procedural abortion, the procedure is called a dilation and evacuation, and usually involves a mixture of techniques to remove the pregnancy from the uterus.

When is an abortion considered medically necessary? An abortion is considered medically necessary if the

There are some medical conditions that can signifi cantly worsen during pregnancy or have treatments that cannot be used during pregnancy. Therefore, medical providers may recommend pregnancy termination to pre serve the life of the pregnant person or prevent serious or permanent injury to various organs. The most common of these conditions involve diseases of the heart, lungs, kidneys, immune system or cancer.

What

are some common myths about

abortion?

Abortions do not increase someone’s risk of cancer. Abortions don’t cause increased risk of infertility, miscar riages, birth defects or ectopic pregnancies. Fetuses in the first or second trimester cannot feel pain. The parts of the brain that can recognize and respond to pain don’t form until the third trimester.

Some people believe a large proportion of abortions happen late in pregnancy. But, over 90% of abortions oc cur in the first trimester – less than 14 weeks along. When abortions happen in the second trimester, the majority are due to fetal anomalies that aren’t compatible with life or may cause significant suffering.

Monaco is a clinical assistant professor at the UF Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

port me should I need an abortion. This luck of the draw is what comforts me on days when my period is late, and it is what comforted me on the day the ruling was overturned. However, millions of Americans don’t have the same support. Abortions will continue to happen whether they are legally protected. It’s our job to ensure that everyone who wants an abortion can continue to safely and affordably access them.

We need to support local abortion networks. We need to support each other financially. We need to offer rides, information and emo tional support to those who need them. But maybe, most importantly, we need to identify the larger struggles to which the struggle for reproductive freedoms is connected.

For many Americans, Roe and other legal protections didn’t materially impact their re productive freedom. Although these histories go beyond the scope of this op-ed, it’s neces sary to contextualize Roe within the history of reproductive rights for all people living within our nation’s borders.

Struggles don’t exist in a vacuum.

We must identify the connections between at tacks on reproductive freedom and those on our LGBTQ siblings, white supremacy, the exploitation of the working class, the climate crisis and every other arm of our current gov ernmental and economic system.

If anything, I hope the overturn of Roe serves as a wake up call for those of us who have existed in a place of relative comfort and privi lege throughout our lifetimes.

Kaplan is a UF political science senior.

Bringing power back to the people

Ever since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the conversation about abortion has been brought up everywhere. As if partisanship wasn’t enough, the question of abortion’s place in America has further divided the country. How can we call ourselves the United States if we start to believe those who oppose our ideas are close-minded and immoral?

The good news is there’s hope. This coun try was founded on the principles of freedom of speech and the belief in the power of civil discourse and compromise. In our short history, we have faced major disagreements on slavery, civil rights, prohibition and women’s rights.

In all these previous arguments, we solved them with compromises of the law. It was the amendments to the Constitution that settled these disagreements for the nation. But how could making a law do so much?

Making an amendment is no joke. It’s taking the Constitution and adding or redacting some thing to it. Due to its importance, the process is long and arduous. Either two-thirds of both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate or two-thirds of state legislatures calling a conven tion need to be reached to do so.

If either method occurs, then the amend ment has to win three-fourths majority from the state legislatures or conventions — formed by each state for ratification. This process could take years, but it ensures a majority of the coun try wants to enact the amendment.

However, Roe wasn’t an amendment.

The legal reasoning for Roe was the govern ment cannot ban abortions prior to fetal viability because it violated a person’s right to privacy. They claimed if an abortion is done in private where only a doctor and their patient know, then the goverment could never find out about the abortion unless they broke the right to pri vacy of the doctor-patient confidentiality clause.

The court case cited the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, claiming “liberty” implies the right to privacy. The reason for the 14th

Column The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The

Amendment, however, was to abolish slavery.

The Supreme Court took an amendment out of context and applied it to a different situation to push their own politi cal agenda. The Supreme Court in 2022 realized this mistake which led them to overturn Roe.

The Supreme Court has the power and responsibility to make sure any action or law committed by the legislative or ex ecutive branch adheres to the Constitution, the supreme law of the land.

They don’t decide whether something should be done. They are simply there to ensure what’s being done is legally allowed. To inter pret the Constitution to fit their personal ideas is wrong because it strips the power from the people. It’s the people who should get to decide how they want their country to run.

It’s up to the people to find compromises and make decisions for themselves through the people they elected into office. The Constitution doesn’t say a person has a right to an abortion, but it also doesn’t say a person doesn’t have a right to an abortion.

It’s up to the people to decide for themselves. Roe stripped the people of the choice and now that it has been overturned, it’s up for the peo ple of each state to choose what they want their state to be like.

This Supreme Court has taken power from the federal government and given it back to the people. So whether your stance is pro-abortion or anti-abortion, you now get to help choose for your state instead of it being decided for you without your input.

Angel Cañón is a UF mechanical engineering sophomore.

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2022 www.alligator.org/section/sports

FEATURE

UF athletes, athletic officials speak on reproductive health

NCAA 2008 PREGNANCY HANDGUIDE NOT UPDATED SINCE ROE'S OVERTURN

By Isabella Douglas Alligator Staff Writer

In one UF athlete’s mind, reproductive health isn’t talked about enough in sports. And, at least in her experience, not at all in college basketball.

Gators junior forward Jordyn Merritt knows how to dribble a basketball up the court, hit a wide open three-point shot and defend both the paint and the perimeter with an intensity only a dedicated athlete who knows their body’s strengths and weaknesses can manage.

However, off the court Merritt said she also knows her body’s rights. And she isn’t happy.

“Being an athlete, if you happen to get preg nant, that could honestly jeopardize your ca reer,” she said. “Not a lot of people are in the financial spaces or even mentally, physically able to take care of a child. And that could re ally throw your life off course.”

Merritt is just one athlete who understands the ramifications of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 court ruling that guaranteed nationwide abortion access, being overturned. She hasn’t seen anyone in the athletics department active ly reach out to teach athletes about reproduc tive health in sports, Merritt said.

UF’s 2021-2022 student athlete handbook has 10 pages dedicated to student athlete’s health. There’s no mention of reproductive health.

However, Jocelyn Gravlee, UF associate professor and interim director in student health care, said student athletes receive their care through UF’s Student Health Care Center and the women’s clinic.

“We discuss reproductive health with stu dent athletes in the same way we discuss it with students,” she said.

FOOTBALL

As an advocate for women’s health, Mer ritt believes everyone — including athletes — should have a general knowledge on repro ductive health, especially with the changing political and social climate.

Merritt learned about the history of Roe at Plano Senior High School, where, at the time, abortion was still federally protected. Since then, she’s become educated about the impor tance of reproductive health from her UF hu man sexuality courses she’s chosen to take.

Still, Merritt wishes health instructors would come speak to athletes about reproduc tive health.

“We have the resources to hire the proper people to educate us,” she said “It's just wheth er or not it is ever done.”

In 2008, the National Collegiate Athletic As sociation released “Pregnant and Parenting Stu dent Athletes: Resources and Model Policies” to guide universities on what to do if a student athlete got pregnant.

The handout outlines protections for preg nant athletes such as not excluding them from sport activities on the condition of “pregnan cy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy or recovery therefrom…”

Title IX, a law banning discrimination on the basis of sex, also protects the athlete from being penalized for taking a pregnancy leave. However, the handout states they may not nec essarily be reinstated to the specific position they formally held.

With Roe reversed, it’s unclear how states that have banned abortions will respond to a student athlete who’s pregnant — even with the handout.

With Florida’s 15-week ban, it’s also un clear how this may affect UF athletes.

"I can’t speculate on any future revisions or updates," NCAA spokesperson Chris Radford told USA Today, "but the NCAA is continuous ly evaluating emerging health and safety issues that may directly impact student-athletes and

Namari Lock // Alligator Staff

the membership that it supports."

Although reproductive health may be an uncomfortable topic to discuss in athletics be cause people have varying political and reli gious beliefs, Merritt said, it needs to be talked about.

“It's just like racism — not everybody wants to talk about that because it’s such a hard top ic,” she said. “If you want to make progress, you need to speak about it, you need to have the difference of opinions, you need to be edu cated.”

Like Merritt, Gators softball first baseman and outfielder Avery Goelz agrees full bans on abortions shouldn’t be legal; however, she said it’s not the athletics program’s job to inform athletes on these matters.

“Our programs are responsible for keeping us healthy so we can play to the best of our ability,but since we are adults I feel it is our re sponsibility to seek information if we want it,” she said. “I think our sport doesn’t discuss the topic because we already spend a lot of time on our overall health and practice.”

UF’s nutritionist provides the softball team with vitamins and minerals if their bodies are in need of something, she said. They also hold meetings throughout the year to discuss how to stay healthy.

“If we feel something isn’t right with our bodies, we go to our trainers, discuss what the problem might be and move forward from

there,” she said.

Merritt hasn’t felt differently since Roe was overturned, she said, which may be because abortion is still legal in Florida and she takes safety precautions.

“I’m sure some of my teammates have a fear about this issue,” she said, “but it’s not some thing that is really talked about on our team.”

Women ages 20 to 24 had 34% of abortions nationwide in 2014, according to Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research and policy organization. By the age of 45, one in four women, according to the institute, will also have an abortion in their lifetime.

And for women ages 18 to 24, sexual assault is at a higher risk, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

UF Assistant Athletics Director Denver Par ler and several UF coaches reiterated health as being the greatest importance to the athletic department.

“Student-athlete health and well-being are of the greatest importance to us, and our poli cies, commitment of resources, and care pro vided reflect that,” Parler said. “Our goal is to empower student-athletes to take ownership of all facets of their lives, including healthcare. We will continue to provide exceptional medi cal care and support to all student-athletes.”

Parler and several UF communications spe cialists — including Senior Associate Athletics Director Steve McClain, gymnastics and soccer communications director Mary Howard, volley ball and lacrosse communications director Ka tie Callahan and swimming and diving commu nications assistant Nick Yuska — declined to comment further on the specifics of what this care entailed and if there’s a concern among UF student-athletes and professionals in abor tion access.

@_issadouglas idouglas@alligator.org

Florida pushes Seminoles in shootout loss, ends season with even record

Gators fell to rival Florida State for the first time in 3 seaso ns

By Joseph Henry Sports Writer

Florida State fans finally had something to celebrate after defeat ing the Florida Gators for the first time since 2017, and they took full advantage.

After the game clock hit triple ze ros, many of the 79,650 fans inside Doak Campbell Stadium took to the field in celebration.

The Gators, who suffered a puz zling defeat to Vanderbilt in Nash ville the weekend prior, entered Tallahassee and found themselves

in a dogfight. The Seminoles, on the other hand, rode a four-game win streak with an average margin of victory of 33.5 into the rivalry clash, but they faced one of their toughest tests of the season against UF.

Explosive, career-high perfor mances from freshman running back Trevor Etienne and Arizona State transfer wide receiver Ricky Pearsall nearly willed Florida (6-6, 3-5 SEC) to victory. However, FSU (9-3, 5-3 ACC) held off a ferocious second-half comeback effort and sent the Gators home with a loss, 45-38.

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UF head coach Billy Napier was satisfied with his team’s effort, but he acknowledged how ultimately losing still stings.

“I am extremely proud. The staff had them ready to compete and they showed up and put it on the line,” Napier said post game. “Tough one to swallow. But we’re going to get better. We’re go ing to improve. We’re going to use that experience.”

The Gators entered the game de pleted on offense, missing four of their top wide receivers. Pearsall, who was questionable to play with

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a lower-body injury, ended up play ing and kept Florida in the game early with a pair of long touchdown receptions of 52 and 43 yards re spectively.

UF quarterback Anthony Rich ardson started the game on fire; he completed five of his first sev en passes for 151 yards and three touchdowns. From then on, Rich ardson ended the game connecting on just four of 20 passing attempts for 47 yards and an interception.

When Richardson sat down for his postgame he looked down at the stat sheet on the table in front

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of him. He shook his head in disap pointment.

“It was just crazy to see it was only nine completions,” Richardson said.

Andrew Aleman, a 50-yard-old FSU alumnus and Seminoles season ticket holder, has watched a decent amount of Florida football, he said, since his stepdaughter went to UF. Aleman believes that Richardson’s inaccuracy throughout the game was what held the Gators back from pulling the upset.

“[Florida] had such an inexperi enced group [of receivers] out there and every time if Richardson was

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Sold-out crowd

even a little bit accurate, I think [Florida] probably might have pulled [the win] out,” Aleman said.

He added he doesn’t think Richardson fits into the offen sive system Billy Napier wants to run at Florida. Both the Gators and Richardson parting ways after this season could be best for both of them, Aleman said.

The sophomore quarterback has still generated buzz in re gards to a prospective NFL career. Richardson has seen his name pop up in numerous mock drafts in recent months, and his decision on whether to stay at Florida or play elsewhere next season seems to be on the horizon.

Richardson, who passed for more than 2,500 yards and rushed for more than 700 yards this season, didn’t directly address his future after the FSU loss. Going back to the draw ing board and fixing the mistakes from the game are his top priority, he said.

The atmosphere inside Doak Campbell Stadium played a factor in the game. The sell-out crowd was surprising since the game was played on a weeknight and the day after Thanksgiv ing, Riley Kiefer said.

Kiefer, a 21-year-old UF information systems and opera tions management masters student, has attended all 12 Gator games this season. He made trips to Knoxville, Tennessee; Jacksonville; College Station, Texas; Nashville and Tallahas see. Kiefer thinks FSU’s home stadium was the second loudest he’s visited this year, but it still doesn’t compare to games in Gainesville.

“It definitely wasn’t anything like the Swamp,” Kiefer said. After the clock hit triple zeros and the Seminoles had se cured their first victory over Florida in three seasons, many fans elected to leap onto Bobby Bowden Field. FSU head coach Mike Norvell, who is in just his third season at the helm in Tallahassee, praised the fans who showed out.

“That's what this game is supposed to be. Energy, passion, incredible atmosphere,” Norvell said postgame. “It was an unbelievable environment to be a part of a college football

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game.”

Kiefer and Aleman agree Florida State fans storming the field was a surprise. Kiefer went a step further and called the act an embarrassment.

“I just don't know how they can think that's justified,” Kiefer said.

The on-field result against the Seminoles and a turbulent 6-6 season ended Napier’s first season in Gainesville on an uncertain note. With news like Richardson’s decision to stay or leave, veteran players likely electing to forgo the Gators’ up coming bowl game and the possibility of more transfers loom

ing, the offseason and Napier’s follow-up season shouldn’t lack storylines.

Aleman plans to watch the Gators closely, he said, and be lieves Napier is going to push the program in the right direc tion. Aleman knows Florida is a consistent program and the closeness of this season’s game against Florida State proves that, he said.

“[Napier] is a great motivator. He’s also a great recruiter,” Aleman said. “That’s where [UF] has the edge.”

@Josephhenry2424 jhenry@alligator.org

Gators women’s tennis legend returns home to help program regain former glory

Lauren Embree makes successful leap into coaching

By Zachary Curtin Sports Writer

During Lauren Embree’s time as an assistant coach at Pepperdine University, she helped pave the way to a spot in the quarterfinal of the 2018 NCAA tournament for the Waves; however, it was her passion and support off the court that gained the respect of her peers.

When Ashley Lahey, who played at Pepperdine from 2016 to 2020, thinks of her fondest memory of working with Embree, she said she hears laughter.

“We would always joke around in the car, and I would always make her laugh, and she would always make me laugh,” Lahey said. “We would go out to dinners a lot; overall it was just a really great time.”

In June 2019, Florida head coach Roland Thornqvist recruited the former Gator All-American to come home as an assistant coach.

During her playing career at UF, Embree amassed five All-American titles and earned Southeastern Conference Player

of the Year honors three times. She also played an integral role in the Gators winning back-to-back national titles in 2011 and 2012.

“Winning the back-to-back national championships with the same team was incredible,” Embree said. “They’re all my best friends. It was a huge deal to me to play for something bigger than myself.”

After her decorated college career, Embree competed in the International Tennis Federation Pro Circuit from 2014 to 2017. As a professional, her 90 career singles wins and 60 doubles wins propelled her to two singles titles and four doubles titles.

Embree returned to Gainesville following her two-year stint as an assistant coach at Pepperdine University. At Pepperdine, she worked under head coach Per Nilsson, who has coached the Waves for nine years.

While her resume continues to develop, Embree’s love for tennis is apparent to all those she interacts with, Nilsson said. Embree’s professionalism was something that separated her from

the rest at Pepperdine, he said.

“She doesn’t go halfway when she decides to do something,” Nilsson said. “Whether it's fitness, dieting, training or whatever it is, she's all in.”

Nilsson found her dedication remarkable and attributed much of her success to it, he said.

During Pepperdine's quarterfinal run, where it would fall to the eventual champions Stanford, Embree’s demeanor made the odds seem surmountable, Nilsson said.

“She calmed everyone down and helped us take care of business,” Nilsson said. “She has a fire in her eyes that scares a lot of people, but on the outside she's calm as can be, and that helped our team for sure.”

Embree looks back on her seasons at Pepperdine fondly, she said. However, she’s now excited to try and replicate the success at her alma mater.

“It was really hard to leave where I was,” Embree said. “[But] I was ready for a new set in my life.”

Back in Gainesville, she hopes

to coach up to the winning standard she helped establish as a player. Embree remembers the positive influence she received from coaches and academic staff, she said.

“That just really propels my drive to want to give back now as a coach,” Embree said. “I just want to make sure all of the girls I coach have that same experience [that I had].”

Thornqvist has helped Embree beyond her collegiate career and has stayed a mentor throughout her life, she said. The nature of their relationship is one of trust and respect, Embree said, which translates to success on the court.

“It’s just great that I have that relationship that we’ve had for 10 to 12 years,” Embree said. “It’s very easy to go talk to him about things or come up with new ideas…We’re a team, and it's always been that way, and I know that he’ll be in my life that way forever.”

Thornqvist alone was not enough to draw Embree back to Gainesville, she said. Embree accredited the sense of community at UF as her biggest reason for returning.

“Everybody is here to support you,” she said. “Now looking back, I try to remind the girls to never take what they’re doing for granted.”

The sky's the limit for Florida’s current women’s tennis roster, and she sees qualities of herself spread throughout the Gators’ lineup, she said.

Senior Carly Briggs has Embree’s competitive spirit, Embree said. Freshman Rachel Gailis carries her drive to get better, and senior Emma Shelton has her charismatic personality, Embree added.

“There’s things in everybody that I value so much,” Embree said. “I love them.”

She has no ceiling as a coach, Lahey said. Obviously Embree can win NCAA championships, but beyond that, the relationships she develops with her players will be her greatest accomplishment as a coach, Lahey said.

The Gators, with Embree coaching, will return to action in January at the Freeman Memorial championship in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Rae Riiska // Alligator Staff

Florida quarterback Anthony Richardson throws a pass between plays during the Gators game against Florida State Friday, Nov. 25, 2022.

Florida braces for stricter abortion guidelines following election

Republican supermajority in Florida could pave way for limited access

By Heather Bushman Alligator Staff Writer

Florida Republicans painted the post-election landscape red, paving the way for more conser vative abortion policies in the up coming legislative session.

Despite candidate emphasis on reproductive rights, Democrats didn’t pull voters in key Florida races. Now, Florida Democrats are rallying to recover from the loss while state Republicans look to stricter abortion guidelines in the coming months.

Florida voters elected a Repub lican supermajority in the Florida Legislature, with 85 Republicans outnumbering 35 Democrats in the House and 28 Republicans ex ceeding 12 Democrats in the Sen ate. The election marks the 12th year in a row of a Florida Repub lican trifecta, where the House, Senate and governor’s office are all controlled by the same party.

Abortion in Florida is banned past 15 weeks. But that could change with the new makeup of the state House and Senate.

Danielle Hawk, the former Democratic candidate for Flori da’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House, said she an

ticipates an easier path to passing stricter abortion guidelines like a six-week ban or a total ban.

“I foresee it getting worse and for them to be putting some more extreme restrictions,” Hawk said. “They don’t need to be biparti san, and they can really just force things through.”

Republican leaders like Gov. Ron DeSantis haven’t explicitly stated plans to tighten existing restrictions, but most ran on plat forms of protecting life. Incom ing Florida Senate President Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, said she’d support a 12-week limit to abortion, according to a Politico report.

On the national level, Demo crats fared better than in Florida. Though Republicans flipped Con gress, the predicted red wave didn’t overtake the U.S. with the severity some thought it would.

Republicans hold 220 seats in the U.S. House — just two more than the minimum for a major ity — and 49 seats in the Senate. The majority is a far cry from the skew in Florida, presenting a sig nificant challenge to the passage of Republican legislation.

Sasse to enter UF presidency with well-documented anti-abortion stance

NEBRASKA SENATOR CELEBRATED OVERTURN OF ROE

By Peyton Harris Alligator Staff Writer

Emma Van Dyke gladly walked away from her hometown where she experienced homophobia and proudly stepped foot onto UF’s campus with rainbow-colored pins on her backpack.

Van Dyke, an 18-year-old UF theater and political science freshman, escaped outward criticisms of her sexuality by entering the college bubble.

But with the appointment of Sen. Ben Sasse as UF’s 13th president, Van Dyke said she feels like the university environment will regress in terms of sexual and reproductive health because of his history of criticizing LGBTQ landmarks and penning antiabortion legislation.

“After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it feels like a giant hand is coming to squish everything that we’ve done at UF and everything we stand for,” Van Dyke said.

Sasse’s contentious selection as President Kent Fuchs’ successor called into question some of his views and legislation while as an acting senator, despite his unanimous approval by the Board of Trustees.

Van Dyke fears for the future of accessible reproductive health resources on campus and students who are unaware or unable to seek private consultation, she added.

Some students like Branyon Skinner,

a 21-year-old UF management senior, think student opposition to Sasse is an overreaction.

Sasse has been the victim of unjust flack, he said. Skinner believes Sasse is a qualified pick.

“People act like he’s going to make it illegal to be gay on campus or make it illegal to do whatever,” he said. “If you have any sort of common sense, that’s just not something that he has the power nor the conviction to do.”

Throughout his political career, Sasse was outspoken about his opposition to LGBTQ issues and abortion protections.

In July, Sasse published an opinion piece in World News where he celebrated the overturn of Roe as a half-century’s work of victory. He touted the anti-abortion movement as the culmination of work by activists exploring options other than abortion.

“The pro-life movement’s strength never came from laws or court cases — it came from truth and love,” he wrote.

Roe soured politics and destroyed lives, he wrote. He claimed the overturn will create a future marked with love.

In a speech from the Senate floor opposing the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified Roe, Sasse said to improve the quality of the abortion debate, Democrats must recognize the humanity of unborn babies, and Republicans must find compassion for women and pregnancy.

“Being pro-life means being pro-science,

pro-mom and pro-baby,” he said. “It means starting with love, not with legislation.”

And in her 2014 endorsement of the senator, National Right to Life President Carol Tobias said Sasse was deeply committed to the anti-abortion agenda.

“Ben Sasse will use his knowledge and expertise to strengthen a culture of life throughout the nation and in Congress,” she said.

In 2015, Sasse authored the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which required doctors to care for infants resulting from failed abortions. For the course of six years, the act failed several times — most recently in 2021.

During his time in the Senate, Sasse was endorsed by several anti-abortion organizations including the National Right to Life Organization, the Susan B. Anthony List, the Family Research Council Action and Nebraska Right to Life.

In one of his most recent appearances at the university during his Oct. 10 UF Q&A forum, Sasse said he would defer to the state government in regard to his personal political beliefs if he were president. But not all members of the Gainesville community believe his vow of “political celibacy,” as he put it.

Adin Kortuem, a 20-year-old UF psychology sophomore, said as a female student, she believes UF should be doing its best to protect her right to choose, and Sasse isn’t an adequate face of that effort.

“If Ben Sasse became the next president

of UF, he would definitely try to limit and reduce the amount of information the school is able to give out about this topic,” she said.

Without proper resources on abortion, students could end up dropping out of UF, Korteum added.

“If they had the information out there where they could find a safe, reliable abortion clinic or a counselor to even just talk about it, they may be able to continue their time at UF and graduate,” she said.

Ashley Sanguino, a UF Generation Action Planned Parenthood spokesperson, said her initial reactions to Sasse’s finalist status were disappointment and anger.

“Many emotions that I feel ring true with how most students feel,” she said. “They feel betrayed by the institution that’s meant to protect them.”

UF’s leaders should be protecting bodily autonomy and enriching student life, Sanguino added.

Lauren Manso, a 19-year-old UF sociology and sexuality studies sophomore, said Sasse’s anti-abortion stance stands in opposition to UF’s future as a sex-positive community.

“To have someone be so anti-abortion doesn’t really sit right with me,” she said.

“This is a college campus. There shouldn’t really be someone who so staunchly supports pro-life sentiments being in power.”

Namari Lock // Alligator Staff

Red wave takes Florida

Nationwide outrage following the overturn of Roe v. Wade materialized in the general election, mostly favoring the Democrats. Around 38% of voters reported the over turn had a major impact on whether to vote, and 47% of voters said it influenced the candidates they supported, according to a study from the Associated Press VoteCast.

Voters who cited the court’s decision as the most im portant factor in the election favored Democrats 2:1, per the study. Among the 47% of voters who said the overturn influenced who they voted for, 64% voted for Democrats in the U.S. House.

The numbers demonstrate a national electorate engaged with the abortion issue, Hawk said. Voters approved abor

tion protections in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Mon tana and Vermont — all the states where reproductive policy was on the ballot.

In Florida, however, it was a different story. Democrats like Hawk, gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist and U.S. Senate candidate Val Demings — who all put abortion access at the top of their political platforms — lost their races to Republican incumbents.

Ben Torpey, a 26-year-old political consultant with Oz ean Media, said the Democratic strategy of highlighting social issues like abortion alienated more moderate voters. Inflation and the economy are typically at the tops of vot ers minds, and Torpey said an emphasis on more abstract points like abortion missed the mark.

“The majority of folks aren’t waking up in the morning and thinking about social justice and equity,” Torpey said.

Alachua voter turnout reached 53%, with 96,000 of 181,000 registered voters casting their ballots Nov. 8, ac

cording to the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections Of fice. Statewide turnout was only 47%, per a preliminary study from UF’s U.S. Elections Project.

The numbers were disappointing to OB-GYNs like Kris ten Witkowski, who works at a small practice in Tam pa. She fears Floridians missed their chance to safeguard abortion access in this election, and she worries policy as extreme as a total abortion ban are on the horizon with a majority Republican state.

“I hoped more people would be upset, and it would prompt people to go vote for people who will prioritize women’s health care,” Witkowski said. “That’s not what happened.”

Melanie Peña contributed to this report. @hmb_1013 hbushman@alligator.org