Abortion Funds Help Pregnant People. South Carolina Wants Us To Stop.

South Carolina is considering imposing a total abortion ban.

Currently, South Carolina bans abortion care after six weeks of pregnancy. The bill scheduled for debate in the state legislature in early October would outlaw the procedure entirely, including in cases of rape and incest.

In 2025, it is already very difficult for South Carolinians to receive abortion care. But it isn’t impossible. A network of nonprofits is still working to to help people get the reproductive health care they need: abortion funds.

Abortion funds are grassroots groups that provide free financial and logistical assistance to people who need abortion care. Over 100 independent abortion funds exist in the U.S. I am a member of the Palmetto State Abortion Fund’s board, in South Carolina.

If the state’s new bill becomes law, however, our activities would become illegal.

As a gender studies scholar, I see the work of abortion funds as a crucial component of reproductive justice. Given the growing restrictions on reproductive rights across the U.S., I think it is important that the public understand what abortion funds do.

What do abortion funds do?

Most commonly, a person who does not want to be pregnant calls or texts the abortion fund’s intake line. Intake specialists at the fund ask the pregnant person about the amount they will need to help cover the procedure, and if they also require support for travel, accommodations, or other logistics.

After confirming clinic appointments, abortion funds tell clinics how much money the fund can allocate for an appointment based on their budget, which is funded by donations and grant money. If one fund can’t cover the full amount, they’ll typically reach out to ask another fund to pledge additional support.

Before and after their client’s clinic appointment, abortion funds also offer emotional reassurance and psychological assistance, including by referring people to counseling and support groups.

Additional efforts to criminalize abortion funds’ work in the state are on the horizon. The South Carolina legislation that would ban abortion completely—“The Unborn Child Protection Act”—would also make it a crime to assist pregnant people in traveling for abortion care. Those found guilty would face up to 30 years in prison.

Another Republican bill, the “Prenatal Equal Protection Act,” proposes to classify getting an abortion as homicide—a crime that is punishable with the death penalty in South Carolina—and helping someone obtain an abortion as a felony.

Abortion fund members remain dedicated to supporting people in need for as long as we can legally do so.

One South Carolina abortion fund, by the numbers

In its first two full years of operation, from 2022 to 2023, the Palmetto State Abortion Fund supported between 175 to 200 clients annually. In June 2025 alone, we helped 200 clients. Currently, our intake line receives on average 50 requests for funding a day.

At the moment, we are not in a position to cover any appointments fully. So we allocate funding based on appointment cost, gestational age, and other factors and collaborate with other organizations to cover people’s full balance.

In addition to booking transportation and housing, our abortion fund will support child care for clients, too. We either contribute to those expenses or put clients in touch with abortion-focused organizations that fully reimburse child-care costs during the appointment. Our volunteers also create after-care kits replete with heating pads, coloring books, and menstrual pads, among other items.

The Palmetto State Abortion Fund runs on donations from people and philanthropies; our annual budget is about $250,000, and 95 percent of all donations go directly to our clients. We also rely on a group of engaged volunteers across South Carolina to help us with transporting clients, among other tasks.

Like abortion funds across the nation, we are struggling to raise enough money to meet soaring demand. Back in 2022—the year that the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—U.S. abortion funds managed to support 70 percent of callers asking for financial support. That number dropped to about 54 percent in 2024, in large part because requests for support increased by 56 percent between 2023 and 2024.

By July of this year, Palmetto State Abortion Fund had already pledged to contribute financially to more than 500 people’s abortion appointments. During that period, we had to close our intake hotline twice because we ran out of money. We had no help to give.

Abortion care can be expensive

Since South Carolina’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s six-week abortion ban in 2023, we’ve seen the distances people must travel for care increase dramatically. The furthest stretch one of our clients traveled was over 650 miles to New York. She needed to see a provider who could serve patients at a more advanced gestational age and with certain medical conditions.

Abortion clinics nationwide are overbooked because those in states that protect abortion are seeing more out-of-state patients. In a 2024 survey of abortion providers, 85 percent said more patients were postponing care due to lack of funding. These involuntary waiting periods, which may delay care by weeks, push many patients into the second trimester of pregnancy.

That necessitates a much costlier procedure than if the person had been seen immediately. The most expensive procedure we have helped fund cost $25,000—again, due to the individual’s gestational age and medical condition.

Medication abortions are not much easier to get in South Carolina. While 1 in 4 people nationwide accessed abortion care via telehealth by the end of 2024, South Carolina has made it mandatory for people to receive abortion medication in person. In a state that has just three abortion clinics, that may require travel and time off work—steps many of our clients cannot afford without our help.

Medication abortion themselves can also be costly. Patients normally take two different pills up to 48 hours apart, and it can cost anywhere between $500 to $950 without insurance, according to the reproductive health chain Morning Star Clinics.

Who are abortion fund patients?

We collect little information on our clients to protect their anonymity. But we run a voluntary survey after patients have used our services, and 198 people responded between March and June 2025.

These responses show that the states we served the most were Georgia, where abortion is banned after six weeks with few exceptions, followed closely by South Carolina. The majority of respondents—55 percent—were young adults between the ages of 25 and 34. Five survey respondents were under the age of 18. And three-quarters of survey-takers reported already having at least one child.

Out of 121 respondents who gave us information about the gestational age of their pregnancy when they called us for help, only one person was more than 12 weeks pregnant. This data falls in line with national data showing that 93 percent of abortions are performed during the first trimester.

No matter their circumstances, our clients say they appreciate our help.

“I don’t know what would have happened without you all,” an unemployed patient from urban Georgia wrote. “I have another chance at life.”

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