Pro-Choice on Campus

Check out these headlines: How to get nearly 90% of students to vote, The numbers show Gen Z is actually the pro-choice generation. Ring a bell? A new wave of choice activists is shaking things up in our movement. The post-Roe generation is making headlines across the nation, and right here at home. 

Throughout the school year, our Pro-Choice Minnesota campus representatives, spread across eight colleges and universities statewide, are organizing transformative campaigns, sharing knowledge, and mastering the skills required to be the torchbearers of the pro-choice cause in the future. 

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with one of these Gen Z changemakers to learn what all the buzz is about. Meet Gabby Buck, a dedicated Pro-Choice Minnesota student organizer at St. Olaf College in Northfield. 

How long have you been involved with our student organizing program; what inspired you to join?

I got involved at the end of my sophomore year, and I’m going to be a senior this year, so just about over a year. I am from Kansas originally, the Kansas-Missouri border, so I think that’s what originally made me realize the lack of access. Especially here, I know it is worse in other places, but growing up here I saw that lack of access and the lack of talking about reproductive health. My school used abstinence-based education and we just didn’t talk about it. I grew up in a very Catholic area, too, and we didn’t talk about anything. We had people come and talk about anti-choice things at school, and so I just grew up very surrounded by it, and never really understood what it was, but I knew I didn’t like it. Once I was able to put a label on it and realize what my issue with it was, I realized that it was something I was really passionate about changing. 

The group at St. Olaf is such a powerhouse, can you share a significant achievement or your proudest moment organizing on campus?

The most recent thing we did, in collaboration with the group at Carleton, we hosted a protest of the Northfield Women’s Center, and we had been working on it for months trying to coordinate everything. There’s always that fear in the back of your mind that no one is going to show up, you’re doing all this work and no one’s going to come, but it was really really successful. Both us and Carleton had a lot of people show up and people got really excited. People posted about it on different social media apps, that was super cool to see people getting involved that you don’t see coming to other things. People always tell us “We want to go do things, we don’t want to sit in your meetings necessarily, we want to do things outside,” and I was like “Okay, I can do that for you, we can make that happen!” 

We also started doing tabling at the same time as Oles for Life, and that got a lot of buzz on campus. It was really cool to see people interacting with us and getting excited to see we were actually doing something about a group on campus that’s generally not accepted by the campus community.

That’s really exciting, how many people do you think showed up to your CPC protest?

Maybe about 70 to 80 people. We were lined up all the way down the sidewalks, it was so cool! And we all walked down there, too, so there were hoards of protestors walking through Northfield, it was so fun. One of our teachers came too, people would pull up and talk to us. I made pamphlets and we were handing them out to people because people didn’t know what we were doing, so we talked to a lot of people, it was super cool.

You were a part of organizing during the 2022 midterms, what was it like to help elect Minnesota’s first-ever pro-choice trifecta? Can you describe your experience organizing during that time and the impact your group had in the Northfield area?

It was so hectic. I have never been so involved in politics, I had always been more involved one on one with people with reproductive rights, so it was kind of new for me to focus more on the political side. I learned so much. We collaborated with the Leftist group on campus and they were very helpful. Representative Kristi Pursell is very present on our campus, and she helped us a lot, too. We had the Pro-Choice Minnesota voter guides, and the day of the election people were emailing me and members of the group directly, and were saying “Hey, send me the voter guide, I’m in the booth right now,” and it was like, okay people see us, people know what we’re doing. It was very cool to see people reaching out and they wanted to vote pro-choice and wanted to know who they vote for from us. Just to see it all come together, it’s Carleton and Olaf in this little town and we have a big sway on what happens, and it was really cool to be like “We did this, we really contributed to making this happen,” and that was so satisfying to see what we’re doing is actually changing something in a huge way, through the government. 

You talk to a lot of students on campus, what are you hearing? What are students’ main concerns when it comes to reproductive freedom, reproductive healthcare, and abortion access?

A lot of the concern is cost, which goes into accessibility, especially with STI testing. The only place you can get free STI testing in Northfield is the crisis pregnancy center, so we are working on that. People are concerned about how to use different contraceptives, the price of emergency contraception, we get asked about that a lot, safe sex, so we've been working on trying to get the wellness center to do events. They’ve done free STI testing for special events in the past, for a day or two days, but we’re still trying to do that so students can get access. I know there were efforts last year to get a fund for emergency contraception so people can afford and access that. Also, gender-affirming care is a big thing that people have asked us about.

Thinking about your senior year this year, I’m sure you’re already brainstorming some big things. What are you most excited to accomplish this year?

Honestly, free STI testing. I am so excited to make that happen. One of the organizers is working at a clinic this year, and we’ve both been talking about how we have to make this happen, this is the thing that people talk to us about. We don’t want people to have to go to the Women’s Center, we want them to have access to this on campus, even though the Women’s Center is not close to campus, you have to take the bus, it’s not convenient. Oles for Life is an advocate for the Women’s Center, so they put up signs all over campus and on the buses in Northfield, it’s very well advertised. Even for pregnancy testing, Olaf charges for pregnancy testing, so we want to get these things for free for people so they don’t have to go to the CPC.

What’s next? What are your aspirations after you graduate, how do you envision continuing to make a meaningful impact if you choose to keep pursuing reproductive freedom advocacy?

I do plan on continuing working in reproductive rights, I’m planning to move to New York after I graduate, and they have a lot of Planned Parenthood administrative positions based there, and I would love to go do that. They have a lot of organizing positions there, too. I have loved organizing, I have loved planning events, and talking to people. I would love to do more work at clinics, like clinic escorting, because I feel like I do a lot of behind-the-scenes work, and I don’t always get to talk to people that are going through what I am trying to make better. I’m hoping to continue what I’m doing on a larger scale.