Funding our work has always been extremely challenging and we do not have the resources to continue carrying the labor demands needed to offer support within the mass healthcare crisis that our country has been experiencing.

Who Are Abortion Funds?

Abortion Funds emerged to address the economic injustices within marginalized communities. In our network, we strive to center leadership reflective of the communities we serve, specifically those who are Black, Brown, and Indigenous. We know that abortion care is out of reach for many because of financial barriers. Abortion care inaccessibility due to geographical landscape, clinic deserts, and gestational bans are the next top barriers. Without insurance coverage and government assistance, folks are expected to pay anywhere from six hundred to over two thousand dollars for a first or early second-trimester procedure. Abortion care later in pregnancy is even more costly.

The financial need a patient faces extends beyond the cost of their care. This is where many funds step in to offer Practical Support which includes transportation, hotel stays, travel airfare, meals, childcare fees, and other expenses that may prohibit a patient reaching their appointment.

Abortion funding work is often round-the-clock support, especially for patients who need to travel alone. The majority of funds are under-resourced and powered by volunteer labor. Sometimes these conditions can contribute to demanding and over-worked environments or not enough people power is available to properly keep the fund services in motion. Some funds have 1-3 staff members but even still that is not enough to distribute the amount of existing labor while also preparing for the major health crisis looming ahead. Access to full reproductive healthcare services is frightfully declining and our organizations need financial investment to remain sustainable.

What Are Abortion Funds Demanding and Needing in This Moment?

As leaders of abortion funds, we need the philanthropy sector to recognize the urgency of this moment and what’s to come. We call on funders and foundations to invest in our infrastructure with unrestricted grant funding so that we may have the necessary resources to build up capacity with staff. We ask philanthropy to rethink the grant application process that has mostly been burdensome on abortion funds when labor capacity is already limited. Our priority is the work on the ground and a grant report that takes days or weeks to prepare is taking precious time away from our community service.

In January of 2020, abortion funds released a list of demands to ground the public, elected officials, lawmakers, and funders in the reality of abortion access and what abortion funds need to ensure we can thrive and continue supporting patients as we all begin to navigate more bans and restrictions across the country. Florida and Arizona have both passed legislation to ban abortion after 15 weeks. This places our states in an even more urgent race to help pregnant people secure the funding they need, as gestational bans result in an increased financial pressure. Our time limit to help patients has been severely undermined and we must be able to provide support with higher medical bill coverage in-state before the 15-week gestational limit or support folks with a higher expense to travel out of state for their abortion care, which is often a logistically unrealistic option for many people.

Philanthropy must reassess how they can quickly support abortion access and reproductive justice in our country. The anticipated SCOTUS decision on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization will make or break individual states’ power to enact more bans and restrictions. In Texas, we are witnessing abortion funds and their leadership being aggressively targeted in lawsuits. Anti-abortion lawmakers see the power of abortion funds and are doing all they can stop us. The criminalization of abortion care has always existed, however, now we will begin to feel the impact on a grand scale.

Philanthropy, do your part in supporting our work so that we can continue aiding our communities. People deserve to have access to the full scope of essential reproductive healthcare services they desire, and abortion funds will always find a way to make it happen.