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Rachel Utz was interning at the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky last June when the Supreme Court announced its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned abortion protections granted by Roe v. Wade. The state’s “trigger law” immediately went into effect, banning all abortions except for when a pregnant person’s life is in danger.

“It was really discouraging,” she said. But at the same time, working with the ACLU while Kentucky residents had their reproductive rights stripped away exemplified how Utz’s values and beliefs connected with her professional aspirations.

Utz has wanted to be an attorney since learning about the gender pay gap at 9 years old.

“I stormed off the bus and came into the house,” she said, asking her mother if she knew about the long-standing inequity. “I was like, ‘OK, what can I do to change [this]?’”

Her mother suggested a career in law, and Utz has been set on that path ever since.

On the day the Court issued the Dobbs decision, an Indeed report found that “the share of job searches on Indeed for phrases like ‘abortion’ and ‘reproductive rights’ soared.” Four days later, “compared with the previous year, the share of searches containing abortion-related terms jumped 1,461%.”

Utz, who graduated from the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville in May, is among those who have since felt called to work in reproductive justice.

“I have always been a civil rights girl at heart,” Utz said, citing her experience growing up as a Black woman in Kentucky. A focus on social justice and dismantling white supremacy led Utz to pursue an internship at the ACLU of Kentucky last summer, which coincided with the overturn of Roe.

That experience solidified her interest in the overlap between law and reproductive justice, leading her to pursue her upcoming fellowship through If/When/How—an organization that matches legal advocates with reproductive justice groups—focusing on their intersection. Utz will take the Kentucky bar over the summer and begin a fellowship with SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW in September. The Atlanta-based organization centers the Black queer and transgender community in its fight for reproductive justice.

With graduation behind them, class of 2023 graduates are beginning their careers during a time when workers increasingly care about their values aligning with their employers’. For Utz and many of her peers, a passion for reproductive justice has not just informed their professional goals—it has also served as a calling.

Abby Zimmerman, a recent graduate of Colgate University, became interested in the reproductive justice space years before the overturning of Roe.

The Dobbs decision “was kind of like fuel and made me even more interested and kind of pressed to get into this field,” she said. “But I don’t think it was a kind of light bulb moment of like, ‘Oh now that this has happened, I must do this.’”

As a women’s studies major and co-president of Colgate’s Planned Parenthood chapter, Zimmerman’s dedication to reproductive justice was spurred by the topics she was exposed to in classroom discussions and club meetings. It was in these spaces where she learned the Court had been moving to overturn Roe far before Politico published the leaked draft opinion in May 2022, motivating her to pursue an internship with Planned Parenthood of Greater New York that summer.

“I could see on a much, much bigger scale how a powerhouse nonprofit works on reproductive justice,” she said. Now, she is “hoping to continue what [she] started last summer.”

Zimmerman hasn’t decided what exact lane of advocacy she sees herself going into—her hope is to expand affordable and accessible reproductive health care to all people, as well as support available to parents. She is particularly interested in contributing to existing efforts to develop and broaden sex education.

As her time at Colgate wrapped up, Zimmerman’s last push in her club leadership position involved petitioning the health center to offer medication abortion, inspired by Barnard College moving to provide abortion pills to students beginning in September.

Halfway across the country, Northwestern University senior Anika Schipma is also hoping to leave a lasting impact on campus before her graduation.

Schipma was inspired to start a club for students interested in maternal health after shadowing the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Northwestern Memorial Hospital last summer. Through this program, Schipma learned about maternal health issues she feels are not researched nor discussed enough.

“Abortion is just the very tip of the iceberg, in my opinion, of reproductive health issues that are facing the country right now that most people don’t even know about,” she said, citing preterm birth (babies born before 37 weeks), low birth weights, maternal care deserts, and postpartum depression as only a few issues pregnant people face.

Schipma was shadowing doctors and conducting clinical research when the Dobbs decision was released, giving her a firsthand understanding of how OB-GYNs were preparing for Roe’s reversal. Although abortion is still widely available in Illinois, it is surrounded by other states with harsh abortion restrictions or bans. Schipma saw how doctors were preparing for what they predicted would be a massive increase in patients who traveled to Illinois seeking abortion-related care.

Medical professionals also voiced concerns about how medication abortion and in vitro fertilization (IVF) would now be affected, the second of which Schipma became particularly interested in.

“There’s kind of a lot of hand waving around some of these really strict states where they place the beginning of life at a very early point, which could be literally the time of conception or the time the embryo’s created,” she said. “That’s a big deal for IVF clinics because … if you consider an egg that’s being removed from women [to be] the creation of life, they have millions of lives being stored in a freezer.”

Along with concerns about how states that are hostile toward abortion rights will address eggs that have been harvested but not fertilized by IVF clinics, Schipma wants to change how states view insurance coverage for the procedure. A number of states do not cover the extremely costly process given that IVF can be viewed as a choice, rather than a life-or-death health issue.

Schipma will pursue a master’s of science in reproductive science and medicine at Northwestern in the fall, noting that the program’s focus is niche and indicating that reproductive health “is really not something that’s being researched enough.”

When she finishes her program, which should take 18 months, Schipma plans to enroll in medical school. Ultimately she hopes to become an OB-GYN, though anti-abortion laws have complicated training at some medical schools.

Schipma said there are simply not enough spaces for aspiring medical students in the United States to be selective about where they choose to go to school.

“Anywhere that I’m getting in, I’m going,” she said, despite concerns that some schools have stopped teaching about both abortion and gender-affirming care. “In a perfect world, I would say ‘I don’t want to go there, because I want to learn those things.’ But the reality is … I can’t be that selective. I wish I could.”

As for Utz, location has been a consideration, but not a defining factor when she contemplates where she would eventually like to practice law. Initially, Utz was hesitant about fighting what looked like a constantly uphill battle.

“Kentucky has a lot of issues, and I feel like it’s largely written off on the national scale,” she said. “It doesn’t get a lot of attention unless it’s negative attention. Why do I want to be in a state where we constantly have to be on the [defensive]?”

At the same time, she stressed that her internship at the ACLU of Kentucky reminded her that the laws enacted by the state do not reflect residents’ beliefs and feelings about abortion.

“The state doesn’t have to be perfect … it’s still definitely worth fighting for,” she said.

The one thing Utz is certain of is her desire to remain in the South.

“It’s hard because people that live in the South understand the way that the South works, and people that don’t live here … it’s almost like going to a completely different country,” she said. “I just feel like I have experience here and … the South is just not something I want to leave behind.”