As Abortion Becomes More Restricted, Abortion Funds Need Your Help

Abortion is now banned in Iowa after six weeks. This new restriction follows Florida, whose six-week ban went into effect May 1 of this year, and the 16 other states that have implemented harsh abortion restrictions in the wake of the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

These restrictions are devastating, and not just for the people living in abortion-hostile states. They transform the entire ecosystem of abortion care and put pressure on states where abortion is legal to take care of those seeking reproductive healthcare outside of their home states.

Abortion funds help improve access to abortion at the grassroots level by helping patients in need of financial support arrange and pay for their abortions. They often cover costs ranging from the procedure itself to travel and childcare.

I’ve worked for abortion funds for the last eight years, first in Texas, one of the most restrictive states, and now in Illinois, which has seen a massive influx of patients from out of state in the years since Dobbs. Last year, 37,300 people traveled to Illinois for an abortion, compared to only 8,500 in 2019. 

The majority of callers that we receive are people in their thirties who are already parents. With inflation and the rising cost of living, they physically cannot afford another child. They make the decision to have an abortion in order to provide for the families that they already have. 

Too often, access to abortion  depends on having enough money. The Hyde Amendment prevents federal funds from being used to cover abortion in all 50 states, and only 17 states use their own funds to pay for low-income patients to receive abortions through Medicaid. In Illinois, one of those 17 states, the procedure still costs between $200 to $300. For those who have to pay for the procedure themselves or have to travel to receive care, that number can be much higher. 

It also depends on where people travel for abortion. The Florida ban is especially damaging because Florida was one of the last Southern states that could provide access to people seeking care. Now it could take nine hours or longer for a person in the South to drive to the nearest abortion clinic.

Chicago, where my organization is based, is now one of the most accessible cities for those seeking abortion care to travel. It has two airports, which makes flights more affordable, as well as public transportation to  move around within the city. It’s not as expensive a place to stay as New York and California, and it’s also a big city, so it has more clinics. 

We’ve been preparing for this. While this new wave of abortion bans has led to two-week wait times in East Coast clinics, abortion clinics in Chicago have carried out proactive hiring and operational adjustments to accommodate the rise in out-of-state patients. When abortions get more expensive with every week of pregnancy, that can make a huge difference.

I discovered my passion for public health work in college, where I became aware of the access to critical health resources that my rural community in California lacked. I began to understand inequities based on where you live, a reality that became even more apparent during my time in Texas. 

Compared to Illinois, Texas makes it really hard to receive an abortion, particularly if you’re part of the half of Americans who can’t devote $500 or more to an unexpected expense. It has a lot of inequality, not a lot of infrastructure to support those seeking abortions, and its abortion funds are almost all volunteer-led. When I worked as a volunteer for the Lilith Fund, there was only one full-time and one part-time staff member. While it has around eight now, the majority of abortion funds have less than four paid staff members. It also doesn’t help that abortion funds in the state are forced to navigate murky legal territory that can tie up their funds.

The city of Chicago has pledged over $1 million to our fund, which goes a long way to supporting the work that we do. In Texas, the City of San Antonio tried to dedicate funding to out-of-state travel for abortion but was sued by Jonathan Mitchell, the architect of one of the state’s abortion bans.

It can’t go on like this forever. It’s expensive to do this work. We pledged $600,000 for direct service and fielded 1,700 calls to our helpline in July alone. It’s scary to think about what will happen if it stays like this.

We are in the midst of a sustained public health crisis. It’s become so normalized that people forget it’s still a crisis, but we can’t afford to allow this to become the status quo.

We can’t just rely on our abortion funds to carry us through forever. Abortion funds holding it all together is unrealistic — we need help and sustained support at the philanthropic, federal, and state level to continue on. More than that, we need legislation passed to protect the right to abortion again. We need to repeal the Hyde amendment to help low-income individuals access abortion and take some of the load off of abortion funds. 

But for now, I encourage you to look for ways to help out. If your local abortion funds don’t have the capacity to train you as a volunteer, please donate. You can become a monthly donor with the Chicago Abortion Fund or with your local fund (which you can find at abortionfunds.org/find-a-fund).

I understand that it’s hard not to get depressed about the current state of abortion access in America, and sometimes it feels like we’re fighting a losing battle. I myself had to step back from taking calls directly because of the emotional labor involved in constantly talking to people directly impacted by these awful restrictions. But until we get some national protection to abortion access back, we have to do whatever we can to help one another.