A New Normal for Abortion Funds Without ‘Roe’

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, people have been reaching out to abortion funds for help in historic numbers. In the first year after the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the National Network of Abortion Funds, a nationwide network of 100 abortion funds, financially supported more than 100,000 people seeking abortion care. NNAF disbursed over $36 million to people seeking abortions, and an additional $10 million in practical support funding, which includes transportation, lodging, and child care.

The decision also resulted in abortion funds receiving unprecedented amounts in donations. An influx of donations to Indigenous Women Rising, an abortion fund dedicated to Native and Indigenous people in the United States and Canada, allowed the organization to double its staff and expand employee benefits.

“We’re so grateful for the folks around the globe who donated right after Dobbs,” said Rachael Lorenzo, Indigenous Women Rising’s executive director. “I’m proud of using those funds to invest in my staff because the work that we do requires a lot of emotional labor, and I want to compensate them for the heavy work they do. It’s made such a positive impact on our organization, especially since a majority of our staff do not have college degrees.”

However, that level of donations has not been maintained since what Sylvia Ghazarian, executive director of the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national abortion fund, calls 2022’s “rage giving.”

Ghazarian said when it comes to donations since Dobbs, “we’ve reversed back to where it was. We’re in constant fundraising mode because a person can’t wait to have an abortion.”

At the same time, expenses have only grown as state abortion bans and restrictions made getting care more complicated and onerous.

“All of us across the board have seen an increase in legal and security costs, which have skyrocketed,” Ghazarian said. “That’s just the reality of this crisis.”

Doing a lot with a little

Abortion funds have been largely ignored by traditional philanthropy and therefore rely heavily on individual donors, making financial planning difficult, if not impossible. Many funds operate on such thin margins that they can’t afford to hire development staff and often don’t have anyone with fundraising expertise.

“We aren’t funded enough to bring in development experts,” Lexis Dotson-Dufault, executive director of the Abortion Fund of Ohio, said. “This is something that a lot of abortion funds struggle with.”

Dotson-Dufault said about 70 percent of the organization’s funding is from grassroots donors, and a lot of those supporters are “in the same demographic as the people we help fund.”

“It’s hard to rely on the same people that also need our services,” Dotson-Dufault said. “I’m really trying to get these relationships with larger donors, talking to them about why this is important. Our funding is so fluctuating, and it’s hard to change your budget every month, every week, every few days.”

Some abortion funds have been navigating not only total abortion bans, but also the possibility of criminal charges for even helping abortion seekers.

“We immediately got [legal] advice not to fund at all, and also not even to [provide] advice, which was the part that really has been frustrating because all of our advice had to look like giving information and not advice at all,” said Jenice Fountain, executive director of the Yellowhammer Fund in Alabama, where a total abortion ban went into effect on the same day as the Dobbs decision.

Yellowhammer Fund adapted by compiling resources “explicitly saying what was possible,” Fountain said. The organization also decided to create safety nets and started a legal fund for people who might be criminalized for trying to get across state lines, which “we haven’t had to use yet, thankfully,” Fountain said.

“It’s also for folks that try to self-manage their care, people that had their pregnancy outcomes criminalized, and people impacted by Child Protective Services,” Fountain added.

This ability to change tactics quickly is the great superpower that funds possess.

“Abortion funds are the most adept and flexible and compassionate group of organizers in the country,” Lorenzo said. “We have done so much with so little, and even with the influx of donations, we’re doing our best to build up infrastructures in a way to make sure our communities’ needs are being met.”

Indigenous Women Rising, like abortion funds across the country, has also expanded its mutual aid efforts, distributing items that are often beyond its clients’ budgets, which includes everything from baby and new parent supplies to menstrual hygiene products.

“It isn’t just about abortion,” Lorenzo said. “We don’t live single-issue lives and we try to work by that. We’re still working in states where abortion is banned completely, and being the only Native-centered, Native-led abortion fund in the country, we also have other considerations to make especially around tribal sovereignty and civil jurisdiction: Is the state where a caller is from a tribe that is federally recognized or state recognized? Where do they typically receive their health care? We have to be conscious of all these layers as a Native organization.”

Adding to costs for abortion funds is helping people travel to another state for abortion care; in fact, interstate travel has more than doubled in the first six months of 2023, compared to the same amount of time in 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

When Florida’s six-week abortion ban went into effect on May 1, “it exhausted a lot of abortion funds across the state,” said Ciné Julien, reproductive justice network-building associate at the Florida Access Network, the only statewide abortion fund in Florida. Clients who leave the state for abortion care travel hundreds of miles.

“We’ve really been going through our funds faster because of the higher lift of travel and practical support needs,” Julien said. “Someone traveling out of the state averages about $1,200 to $1,500, and that’s three times what people would pay for in-state care.”

In 2023, Florida Access Network dispersed about $400,000 to support 1,500 Floridians to pay for their appointments and travel care. In contrast, since the six-week ban went into effect on May 1, Florida Access Network funded 150 people for abortion care and are on track to disperse $100,000 by the end of this month.

Sustained investment is necessary

Navigating financial instability, clinic closures, and overnight legal changes are issues that abortion funds have always faced.

“That’s the only way I’ve ever known this work—to be chaotic and ridiculous. I’ve never known a moment of stability,” said Megan Jeyifo, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund. “But that’s where we really shine: If we see a problem and something isn’t working, we’ll change it. We’re not tied to some kind of process for process’s sake. We have to use each moment as a catalyst to get to the next moment. We are trying to be as nimble as possible because this moment demands that—it demands creativity and flexibility.”

That flexibility is how abortion funds are able to pivot quickly, especially in states like Arizona where abortion was “constantly flipping being banned and legal,” Eloisa Lopez, executive director of the Abortion Fund of Arizona, said, referencing the Arizona Supreme Court ruling in April that the state’s 1864 abortion ban can be enforced; about a month later, Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill to repeal the ban.

“What we did last year may or may not work for this year and we are understanding that the landscape is constantly shifting,” Lopez said. “Even though we are based in Arizona and the majority of our patients come from Arizona or the Southwest, we’re also collaborating with other funds in the Midwest, the South.”

“Depending on what sibling funds are expressing—maybe they’re going through a financial hardship and other funds need to lean in to help them out?—there are always shifts happening, and that’s a key element of our work: Be flexible to meet the need in that moment,” Lopez continued.

Abortion funds also have a unique perspective on abortion seekers’ needs and are constantly adapting to meet those needs as well.

“There are all sorts of barriers that a lot of people don’t anticipate and most people in this country don’t think about when it comes to abortion,” said Diana Parker-Kafka, executive director of the Midwest Access Coalition, an abortion fund helping people travel to, from, and within the Midwest. “Getting to abortion care is a huge, huge issue. It’s often more expensive than the procedure itself.”

Traveling for several days to get an abortion means taking time off work and often figuring out child care, as 70 percent of the Midwest Access Coalition’s clients are already parents to young children, according to Parker-Kafka.

In the two years since the Dobbs decision, Midwest Access Coalition has increased its practical support efforts, which includes not only providing financial assistance with all of these costs, but also logistical and emotional support. It also developed a software program to distribute cash directly to their clients while they are in an abortion clinic to cover any additional expenses outside the abortion procedure, such as food, pain medication, and child care.

Major, sustained investment is necessary for abortion funds to be able to continue providing this vital role in the abortion access ecosystem.

“If we want this access to continue during Trump, during the right-wing take-over of the courts, we need to decide as a community to continue to pay for it,” Parker-Kafka said. “Whether that’s by individual donations or telling your city or state to start ponying up, and start using the massive amounts of money that they have at their disposal to support body autonomy. It’s extremely expensive work, but it’s direct service and it gets results. People who don’t want to be pregnant don’t have to be if they reach out to an abortion fund and get connected.”

The post A New Normal for Abortion Funds Without ‘Roe’ appeared first on Rewire News Group.