When Isabel Torres found out she was pregnant at 36 years old, she had enrolled in college twice before but left before earning a degree. Now, the stakes seemed even higher to go back and finish to better provide for her daughter.

She enrolled at Austin Community College and decided to earn an associate degree. That meant raising her daughter while balancing work, a work-study job and classes. A two-year degree took four years to complete. Torres said it took a lot of dedication and help from a slew of resources offered at ACC.

“I was able to access child care support. I was able to access book lending programs … I was able to qualify for a work-study [job],” she said. “I don’t know how I would have done it without those resources.”

According to national statistics, 1 in 5 college students have children, one of the many identified barriers that can make it difficult for students to complete a certificate or credential. Most student parents are women and , like Torres.

Texas is adjusting to a near-total ban on abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in struck down Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional protection for abortion and allowing states to set their own laws regulating the procedure. Texas lawmakers on both sides of the aisle recognized that the number of pregnant and parenting students will likely increase in the state.

This legislative session, lawmakers passed multiple bills that would provide more support to students with children as well as codifying their rights in state law to ensure all colleges and universities are set up to meet their needs. Gov. has already signed one bill into law.

“What we like about these bills is that it sets the table for an understanding that students who are parents face different responsibilities,” said Amy O’Donnell with Texas Alliance for Life. “They have different weights on them, they have different pressures on them. They have to navigate different things than a student who is not a parent and there needs to be accommodations for them. There needs to be resources.”

One bill requires colleges and universities to designate an employee as a liaison specifically for parenting students to connect them with resources they might need on campus, including tutoring, transportation, child care or access to public assistance programs. Another bill requires schools to allow students with children to register early for classes. A third bill codifies existing rights for parents in state law to ensure faculty and school administrators understand what types of accommodations or services they need to provide students expecting or raising children.

“Those are all low-hanging fruit and things we should be doing, “ said Jonathan Feinstein, state director for Texas at The Education Trust. “It sends a much-needed signal that these populations and these students need to be visible and that it’s OK for them to be visible.”

The legislation forced strange bedfellows: abortion opponents pushing the state to show support for students who might keep an unplanned pregnancy and abortion-rights advocates pushing to ensure that without the choice to get an abortion that students at least get the services they need to complete their education.

“We don’t have that choice anymore. It’s a question of whether you choose to go college while you’re having children,” said Sen. , D-Austin, who sponsored . “My team was actively looking for pro-parent, pro-family legislation in full acknowledgement that in a post-Dobbs world, we need to wrap people with services in a manner and to an extent that we had not seen pre-Dobbs.”

Abbott has already signed a bill carried by Sen. , R-McKinney, which spells out specific rights that pregnant and parenting students have to pursue a college degree. It allows them to take leaves of absence and excuse any missed classes due to pregnancy or childbirth. It requires colleges and universities to create a nondiscrimination policy for students with children or pregnant students.

Paxton told members when she laid out this and other bills in a March committee hearing that she had a personal connection to the legislation. and was able to persist only with outside help.

“She was actually able to go on and go back and finish her master’s degree, but many, many folks don’t have family support or they maybe have families that are just far away,” Paxton said.

Multiple women who testified in support of the legislation shared experiences in which schools suggested they take a leave of absence or provided little information on possible accommodations to continue attending classes. Others said they were unable to access recordings or materials for classes they missed to take care of a sick child. The stakes are high: In many cases if students miss a certain amount of classes, they can be dropped from a class. And if students fail too many courses, they could lose access to financial aid.

Monica Palma said her law school suggested she take a leave of absence when she gave birth to her third child.

“I was flabbergasted and disillusioned because my kids would still be here in a year or two and I would be further behind on my goals,” she told lawmakers.

Paxton also sponsored legislation that requires universities to allow students with children to register early for classes so they have access to the courses that best fit their schedules. That bill also received bipartisan support.

“Being able to plan out the next six months is crucial,” Torres, the student at ACC, said. “Being able to register and you only have two or three weeks to line everything up is sometimes not enough time if you have a boss or if you work for a corporation that doesn’t really bend.”

Another bill requires universities to assign an existing staff member as a liaison for parenting and pregnant students who would help them connect to various resources such as health care, transportation, child care and other public benefits. That bill also requires universities to start keeping track of how many student-parents they have on campus, including their demographic data and how well they’re progressing toward graduation.

“We actually will be able to quantify how many of these students we have in our Texas colleges, get a sense of their demographic makeup as well as their needs and how well we’re meeting them,” Feinstein said. “That was kind of an unknown.”

Advocates say the stakes are high for Texas’ workforce to make sure these students earn a certificate or degree after high school. According to , student-parents are more likely to attend community college. They are predominantly students of color and are older students who carry nearly twice the student loan debt as most students. They also perform better than students without children.

Torres was assigned a work-study job on campus at ACC to help other students access resources to support their needs in and out of the classroom, including food and housing insecurity or academic issues. As she was about to graduate, a full-time position opened up. So she decided to stay and continue helping other students get to graduation.

“These laws are crucial,” she said. “It really [makes] a difference of the students finishing their program or not.”

Disclosure: The Education Trust has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

“I think that the responsibility to provide access to care increases with this reversal… especially in banned states,” said Tamara Marzouk, director of abortion access at Advocates for Youth, a national nonprofit supporting students’ sexual health and rights.

For some schools in the 21 states where abortion is still protected, expanding access to procedural and medication abortion — via oral mifepristone and misoprostol — is well underway. 

Regardless of state policy, advocates contend higher education institutions can better support pregnant and parenting students through a variety of . Failure to do so could prove disastrous for enrollment — particularly for low-income and Black students, underrepresented in higher education and most likely to have compounding barriers to abortion care.

Below are eight examples of how colleges are supporting students’ ability to continue attending school while navigating pregnancy:

1. Where still protected, providing on-campus abortions

Given the Dobbs ruling, clinics have already begun to see an overwhelming with people traveling for care — which has always impacted students whose campuses are at times dozens of miles from the nearest service provider. 

“Colleges and universities really have a responsibility to provide abortion on campus to alleviate that burden on clinics, and to cut down travel time for students,” Marzouk added. “When a person has to travel for an abortion, and really no matter how far, they’re often missing classes, unable to complete schoolwork, missing their jobs or internships.”

The University of Illinois – Chicago has offered students access to medication abortions since 2006; by next January, every public university in California must legally provide the same. A replication bill in has been introduced; interest is growing in New York and Washington state as well, said Marzouk. 

At the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, the system’s largest where students would travel one-way by transit to reach the nearest facility, access to medication abortions will . 

2. Reforming attendance policies

Though schools are required under federal Title IX regulations to excuse “medically necessary” pregnancy-related absences, including abortion and miscarriage, recovery may well last longer. 

Some schools, such as , offer transparent and flexible attendance and leave policies. Having such school-wide policies and staff who advocate on students’ behalf with professors keeps them informed of their rights and prevents students from being arbitrarily . 

3. Establishing emergency funds for travel, care 

Aboritions are expensive: The average cost of medication ranges from $300 to $750; during the first trimester, the cost of procedural abortions can reach up to $1,500 without insurance. These estimates do not include any visits with a provider, travel or lodging costs. 

Given that about 59% of people seeking abortions already have children and are balancing financial obligations, the cost is prohibitive.  

Advocates recommend schools establish — at times used to support young people to travel after the death of a family member or purchase necessities — or expand existing funds to support students seeking to terminate pregnancy. 

4. Expanding on-campus reproductive healthcare services

Activists contend expanding free and affordable on-campus healthcare  to include prenatal care, birthing services, STI screening and emergency contraceptives can help support students navigating barriers to care in a post-Roe world. 

The , for example, offers discounted contraceptives and Plan B without prescription for all students. 

Additionally, schools can tap into peer networks as part of their services, said Marzouk. Advocates for Youth offers six-week abortion doula training — where students learn to provide emotional or physical support to others seeking abortion care.

5. Reforming exclusionary housing policies 

Roe’s reversal means some students may be be forced to become parents. Yet college housing policies are not always inclusive to family living. In 2015, at least in their first year. , where abortions will be banned after six weeks, is one of them. 

Campuses like Pennsylvania State have adapted policies to better meet needs of parenting students by offering and free or subsidized . The University of Rhode Island also offers parenting undergrads the option to live in graduate, suite-like housing. 

6. Formally recognizing reproductive rights groups 

In some southern and midwestern states, campuses “have not been friendly” to reproductive justice or pro-abortion organizations, said Marzouk. Student activists in Texas and Ohio sometimes operate externally, but that means they may not be able to access the same buildings or funding that other student groups can. 

“We also know that young people go to each other,” Marzouk added. “Even if a smaller group of students knows exactly what services are available on campus, [they’re] ensuring that campuses are facilitating that communication within the student body.” 

7. Ensuring inclusivity & privacy 

Any student, regardless of their gender, may need to access an abortion. Abortion activists encourage the use of inclusive language so as to not repeat the transphobic and homophobic rhetoric often adopted by politicians and service providers who exclusively use “women” in materials, or seek out a “husband’s” for a hysterectomy, for example. 

Colleges can also ensure confidentiality and privacy policies are well-known, so that students know what to expect if they ask for temporary leave, Marzouk said. 

8. Freely publicizing information 

“It’s one thing for a service to be … offered very quietly and privately and it’s another thing for a service to be out there in the community known about and really inclusive of all students,” Marzouk added. 

For example, the fact that Plan B, used as an emergency contraceptive and offered at school health centers, may lose effectiveness for people weighing over 165 pounds is commonly ignored — students may use it unknowingly unless informed otherwise. 

And where campuses do not yet offer medication, students are able to manage their abortion on their own through — which pills to residences. Yet awareness for this option is still growing. ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ was unable to find a university health page that communicated this mail-in service as an option.

At higher education institutions, students may find it difficult to find what services are available to them on-campus in an online search. Utilizing social media, emails, student groups, and orientation to include reproductive healthcare information, activists say, is key to expanding access right now.