Story by Kellie Finch
Cover by Olivia Goodson
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — It’s mid-October, less than two weeks away from Election Day, and students are rallying in full force at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Student organizations sit in the Pit—a brick patio that sits below ground level at the heart of the UNC-CH campus, where it’s believed that every student passes through at least once a day—asking if their fellow Tar Heels have voted, preaching the gospel or recruiting new members.
One club’s table that can often be found is Students for Life at UNC-CH, a pro-life campus organization that strives to serve and educate the student body about abortion. The group’s signs, with messages such as “Abolish Abortion” and “Choose Life,” intend to help students engage in thoughtful conversations about abortion—but are not always met with support from UNC-CH’s largely liberal campus.
“We’ve been, obviously, cursed at, yelled at from across the Pit,” said Abigail Buxton, a UNC-CH senior and the president of Students for Life. “We’ve also been spit on.”
Buxton said her friends from other North Carolina universities even receive daily death threats due to their involvement in the pro-life movement.
This type of retaliation creates a level of discomfort surrounding the abortion conversation, Buxton said. However, despite the pushback, she’s determined to have these conversations with her fellow students.
“College campuses are a place where we want diversity of thought,” Buxton said. “We want to engage with people of the opposite viewpoint, to learn, to grow, to see, ‘Hey, why do you think that?’”
The college level is a great place to begin changing the narrative surrounding polarizing topics such as abortion, Buxton said. Before anything can be changed on the national level, starting small with college students who are eager to learn is a step.
There’s just one problem. Many college students aren’t eager to learn about abortion.
Eight miles down the road, at Duke University, the student body leans liberal, similar to UNC-CH. Despite sharing similar opinions with the rest of the campus community, students aren’t looking to get involved, whether that’s advocating for reproductive rights or simply engaging in conversations with fellow students.
Katelyn Sheets, a senior and one of the co-presidents of Planned Parenthood: Generation Action at Duke, credited Duke’s issue with the topic to simply a lack of interest.
“I think the issue that we struggle with is more just apathy surrounding getting involved in the reproductive rights movement and getting involved in politics at all,” Sheets said. “Or, just wanting to be aware of it.”
One of Sheets’s theories about why this is correlates with Duke being a private university, with a small in-state student population.
“I think the issue is that because there are so many out-of-state students at Duke, people aren’t aware of what’s going on in North Carolina, and a lot of people are from states where abortion is protected,” Sheets said. “They haven’t been in a place where it’s under attack the way that it is in North Carolina.”
Duke’s student population was 84% out-of-state students as of fall 2023, with students’ top five home states being North Carolina, New York, California, Florida and New Jersey.
Residents of North Carolina cannot receive an abortion past their 12th week of pregnancy, while Florida residents cannot receive an abortion past six weeks. Abortion remains legal in New York, California and New Jersey.
As Election Day approaches, abortion remains a hot topic of discussion by Democrats and Republicans on a local and national scale, especially gearing toward young voters. Despite this, many college students avoid discussing the topic with others due to its intense polarization.
“I feel like the rhetoric around abortion is sort of like, the right has its set of facts and the left as its set of facts and they almost have no cross-section,” High Point University senior Thomas O’Hara said. “So I’m hesitant because I don’t know what’s true or not.”
High Point University is private and ranks 10 on the Princeton Review’s Most Conservative Students list. It prides itself on being a “God, family and country” institution.
Across public and private universities in North Carolina, covering both sides of the political spectrum, discussing abortion is often considered taboo.
Students at UNC-CH, Duke and High Point said in interviews that they typically feel comfortable discussing abortion within their friend groups but feel hesitant to engage outside of their circles.
“It’s a topic that people have really strong, really angry opinions on and I don’t want to get involved in that,” UNC-CH senior Jake Langenderfer said. “With friends I trust, I would, but we all share the same views anyway, I think.”
Langenderfer said he believes discussing abortion is important on college campuses, but doesn’t want to be the person initiating those conversations. The diverse backgrounds that a public university like UNC-CH offers can make the abortion conversation “more tense,” he said.
Steven Greene, a professor of political science at North Carolina State University, agrees that discussing abortion is important, but says that college campuses are no longer a productive space to be having these conversations, leading back to the topic’s polarization.
“Sadly, these days, college campuses are not a great space for students to have conversations about any controversial issue,” Greene said.
In Greene’s research as an expert on public opinion on abortion, his studies have shown that on a national level, people simply aren’t comfortable picking sides when it comes to abortion. When participants are given the option of “neither agree nor disagree,” between 20% and 25% of people pick that option, in most cases, Greene said.
“The reality is, even what seems like policy issues where people should have a side—a clear position—a lot of people really aren’t quite sure what to think, or simply just have very weak opinions,” Greene said.
A recent High Point University poll asked North Carolina residents which issue would impact their presidential vote the most. Abortion ranked fourth in percentage overall (8%), following inflation (28%), immigration (14%) and threats to democracy (13%). In the 18-34 age range, abortion tied with threats to democracy and national security for the third place slot.
Despite the interest young people show in abortion when it comes to their votes, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re not holding conversations and educating each other on the cause. One of Greene’s goals to combat this is through work in the classroom first.
“I’m frequently just trying to get across the point that public opinion on the topic is a lot more complex, and far less binary, and that when they see stories by default putting into this kind of pro-choice versus pro-life paradigm, that you’re missing a lot of the reality,” Greene said.
Dr. Susan Roberts, a professor of political science at Davidson College, said her approach to navigating the abortion conversation is changing the way she phrases the topic.
“I always tell my students, don’t talk about abortion,” Roberts said. “Talk about access to abortion.”
Roberts teaches a 12-person political science seminar, comprised primarily of seniors. In her courses, Roberts works to ensure each of her students is comfortable in the class environment and doesn’t have to fear the retaliation of others’ differing opinions.
“I structured the course so that students who are on the conservative and the more liberal side can feel comfortable, and they don’t have to tell me,” Roberts said. “If they want to make arguments or tip their hand, that’s fine, but I don’t want them to come in there and kind of expect a fight.”
Because Roberts’ classes have a large focus on law, it forces her students to set personal beliefs aside and look at the facts surrounding certain court cases.
“It’s not like, when-does-life-begin fact,” Roberts said. “It’s like, in this Supreme Court case, so-and-so argued so-and-so.”
Using different framing is a way for students to keep an open mind when it comes to traditionally polarizing topics like abortion, Roberts said. This, and encouraging productive, respectful conversations, has made an impact on how her students engage with the conversation.
Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, believes college campuses are a space where students should have the option to discuss polarizing topics like abortion, but it’s up to each institution to ensure students have the proper resources they need to do so successfully.
“I think if a classroom environment can be one where people respect somebody with a differing opinion—not necessarily agreeing with them on this kind of controversial issue, but at least hearing from them as how they view things—I think that’s an important role for colleges and universities,” Bitzer said. “Not just to stoke controversy for controversy’s sake, but to help people better understand where others are coming from and maybe where they themselves are coming from.”
The consensus among professors interviewed across different North Carolina universities is that building students’ comfort and trust in each other, as well as their institution as a whole, is how the narrative surrounding abortion is shifted away from the polarizing, black-and-white representation it currently holds.
Controversial issues are never simple to discuss, but ensuring students are educated on the best way to engage in these conversations and can do so respectfully is the direction we need to move in, professors said.
Martin Kifer, director of the High Point University Poll, shares similar sentiments to Greene, Roberts and Bitzer. Many students are already reluctant to speak up, but if they don’t feel comfortable in their campus environment, they will never be willing, Kifer said.
“I’m sure there are approaches that will work to make sure that students or others have increased comfort in talking about controversial issues,” Kifer said. “I deal with politics all the time. It’s a matter of finding ways for people to engage honestly but without fear of being condemned on these issues.”
As Election Day approaches, topics like abortion remain on people’s minds—whether they’ve already cast their ballot and are anxiously waiting for Nov. 5 to arrive, or are finishing up some last-minute research on their candidates of choice.
For Buxton, as president of Students for Life at UNC-CH, conversations about abortion are important—not to build upon her views, necessarily, but to spread diversity of thought across college campuses, and to blur some of the polarization that intensely exists on the topic of abortion.
Regardless of a student’s views, being open-minded, willing to learn and not being afraid of disagreement is what Buxton—and many others—hopes students move toward.
“It’s important to have genuine conversations and not just have two-side yelling,” Buxton said. “I think so much when you look at national politics, especially on this issue, it is so divisive, and it’s really important that we start here at the grassroots level on college campuses where people are here to learn and have those productive conversations.”
