Jessica Washington
Under a Kamala Harris candidacy, Democrats are going on the offensive on abortion.
Democrats are increasingly supportive of abortion rights and motivated by the issue, according to a recent report by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute. And a new wave of philanthropists are making abortion rights their top priority.
But while their dollars put the issue at the center of the national stage, abortion funds — local grassroots groups that help people on the ground actually obtain abortions — are seeing funding plummet. At the same time, these funds are more stretched than ever before. Fourteen states now almost completely ban abortion, meaning more callers than ever are asking for financial support to travel long distances for access.
The Florida Access Network fund says donations have decreased drastically despite funding requests increasing dramatically. The fund received $200,000 in individual donations in the month after Dobbs was announced; they’ve raised only $50,000 since the state’s six-week ban was announced in April. The ban increased both the number of people calling for support and the amounts they were requesting. Following the ban, the state saw a rapid increase in the cost of abortion care to around $2,000 per-person, compared to $1,500 earlier this year.
The Abortion Fund of Ohio supported roughly 18% of all state abortions last year. However, in January, the fund had to temporarily stop operations due to funding constraints. And they’re still not able to fully meet the rising demand. In July of 2023, the fund supported fewer than 350 patients with more than $100,000 in spending. In July of 2024, they funded nearly double the callers — over 600 patients — with about half as much money, totaling $60,000 in spending.
“I think people are so focused on a legislative or federal strategy… they’re missing the fact that in real-time right now, every day on the ground, people need access to abortion,” said Oriaku Njoku, executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds.
“There’s a universe where we can focus on the policy and the advocacy and the legislative wins that we need while making sure that the material conditions of people on the ground who need access to abortion are being met at the same time. This is not something that’s a binary.”
Florida historically provided nearly 10% of U.S. abortions, and recently soaked up thousands of out-of-state patients from ban states. With a 235% increase in callers, the Florida Access Network made the difficult decision last year to support only Floridians.
As a rust belt abortion hub, surrounded by states with total bans, the Abortion Fund of Ohio calls surged past 4,000 patients last year, compared to 1,175 callers in 2022.
“Appointments are getting booked up. People are having to book further along [in their pregnancy], and the further along you are, the more care is going to cost," said Lexis Dotson-Dufault, executive director of the Ohio fund.
“The amount that we are able to support out-of-state folks feels disgusting. Actually, it feels like a slap in the face, the amount we're able to fund in general.”
Grassroots abortion funds had a fleeting moment in the sun. In the year after Dobbs, abortion fund budgets increased by 88%, allowing 100 funds to collectively disperse $37 million to people seeking abortions, according to National Network of Abortion Funds data.
People running abortion funds knew the flood of Dobbs “rage-giving” would dry up quickly. And it has. But at the same time, tens of millions of dollars have flowed into the reproductive rights space.
As we reported last year, none of this was going to women needing abortions. Philanthropy has largely focused on a national campaign to reinstate Roe v. Wade.
Even if Roe would be restored it would still leave large gaps in abortion access, and the burden of covering that breach would fall on thinly-stretched abortion funds. In 2020, even with Roe intact, 80,000 callers requested funding for abortions.
“I think the future could be brighter when it comes to abortion access,” says Njoku. "But not if we're just focusing on restoring Roe … because Roe was never enough for people who needed to actually access abortion care.” Abortion fund leaders have instead called for Democrats to support unrestricted access to abortion without viability and gestational limits and an immediate end to the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funds from being used on abortion care.
Earlier this summer, national abortion-rights organizations including Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Reproductive Freedom for All announced that they would be spending $100 million for a 10-year policy campaign to restore the federal protections that existed under Roe and expand access.
"I can't even begin to describe how life-altering it would be if abortion funds had access to that type of money,” Dotson-Dufault said. “We were able to meet 100% of patient needs last year, and we spent $1.5 million. Imagine if we even just had $3 million for direct abortions. We could meet every patient's needs.”
Njoku says even with Harris, an arguably stronger advocate on this issue as the nominee, advocates and fund leaders will have to keep the pressure up.
“I think that we're going to have to keep fighting for our rights regardless of who's in the administration,” they said. “To make sure that what we get is closer to the future where reproductive justice can be a reality for all.”
