DEC 5, 2024 | OPINION | By Fiona Frankel
A few weeks ago, I returned from Block Break extremely sick. I went to urgent care and the emergency room, and both emphasized the same thing: I needed to see a gynecologist as soon as possible. Fall Break began in one week, but I wasn’t going home; my family was planning on leaving the country for the break, and I had a Friday night red-eye from Denver to meet them.
At the emergency room, I received five referrals to gynecologists in Colorado Springs. At 8 a.m. on Monday, I began calling, hopefully looking for an appointment at any time in the next four days. However, every office was booked solid, offering me appointments in late December and early January. I was forced to expand my search. I called offices in Manitou Springs, Pueblo and Denver. My parents, not Colorado natives, asked if Boulder, Fort Collins or Glenwood Springs were too far to go for an appointment. Nothing worked: every office was booked or unwilling to take on new patients.
As a last resort, I found a cancellation at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs and got an appointment on Tuesday evening. I sat in my Lyft with a driver named Skipper and waited as the security at Planned Parenthood pawed through my bag before buzzing me through a locked door. And as I had been throughout the past week, I was struck by a recurring thought: healthcare should not be this hard.
I am extremely privileged financially. I’m on my parents’ privatized health insurance, which covers most healthcare services. What it doesn’t cover, they willingly pay out of pocket. However, this wasn’t a matter of money. I was having a health crisis and multiple professionals instructed me to see a gynecologist, yet no doctor could see me. The backlog of medical cases and commonality to overwhelmed physicians is not specific to women’s health care. However, this trend is far worse for women’s health services and receives little attention. On top of this, there is a small but important caveat to my situation: I am a student. Why isn’t my school providing this care?
On a campus with over 1,000 people with female anatomy, it is disappointing and unacceptable that we are given such little care when it comes to our reproductive health. Months ago, I visited the CC Student Health Center for a gynecologist referral in Colorado Springs. I was given a number for an office not taking on any new patients and had no space for consultations. More recently, amidst my search for gynecological services, I returned to the health center to beg them for any contacts or connections they might have to assist me. The nurse who spoke to me in the lobby was kind but firm: they couldn’t help me.
Thanks to the unfortunately rushed care I was given at the emergency room, my assessment was incomplete and I was misdiagnosed, then prescribed an antibiotic to treat a condition I likely did not have that carried harsh side effects. I missed three days of class due to the intense physical impact of a medication I was on but did not need.
Though several red states, notably Montana and Missouri, voted to enshrine the right to abortion in state constitutions during this election cycle, abortion rights and subsequently all access to gynecological services continue to be under attack. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, maternal death rates have tripled in states with abortion bans. At the second anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, over 64,000 rape victims have been forced to give birth.
I’m thankful I learned the history of my Planned Parenthood location days after attending my appointment rather than prior. Planned Parenthood Colorado Springs Westside is the sole organization location in our college city. The others are in the Denver metropolitan area with a few scattered further north. Just nine years ago, it was also the site of a mass shooting perpetrated by an anti-abortion attacker who described himself as “a warrior for the babies,” in which three people were killed and nine injured.
It is easy to ignore, especially as a predominantly wealthy institution with the majority of students coming from blue states to our liberal state of Colorado. Though we should care about this as an issue notwithstanding its impact on our own lives, this crisis has devastating impacts across the country regardless of statehood. Doctors of obstetrics and gynecology, often called OB-GYNs, have always had more precarious roles than physicians in other specialties. Due to the inherently controversial substance of their work, they are forced to purchase additional malpractice insurance that is annually increasing in cost and are more at risk for lawsuits and workplace violence. Though less than 20% of OB-GYNs choose to perform abortions, it is an increasingly difficult and dangerous profession, an issue exacerbated by the Dobbs decision.
The United States is now experiencing a shortage of OB-GYNs as the workforce ages, nursing students turn away from women’s medicine and fewer medical students are inclined to join the uncertain future of the specialty. As this decline continues, abortion services are not the only matter under threat. Abortions account for only a small portion of the services that Planned Parenthood, as well as most other gynecological services providers offer (less than 5% for the former, according to their annual 2022-2023 report). STI testing and treatment, contraception (including IUD insertion and birth control pill prescription) and cancer screening and prevention are vital services for all women who are at an increased risk in a post-Dobbs era heading into a second Trump administration. This issue transcends state lines: my case is a minute example of a more significant issue regarding the lack of access to women’s healthcare.
I was able to get a last-minute appointment with a gynecologist after confiding in my professor, whom I’d met three days prior. Unlike the official student health services at our institution, she immediately called her physician and convinced them to take me for an appointment that same day. Though this was an incredibly kind moment of generosity, it was also an anomaly: most students would not have been this lucky. One week after being urged to see a specialist, I finally achieved this care, thanks to a good samaritan and despite the college’s services. My situation speaks to a larger issue that the school must attempt to address.
Colorado College must expand its student health center and provide comprehensive women’s health care to students, including birth control services, cancer screening and prevention, STI testing and treatment, sexual health education and accurate and attainable referrals. Without these services, we are not fulfilling our commitment to protecting and supporting the women in our community. As it stands now, we are failing to do so.