{"id":1026,"date":"2024-01-15T07:08:04","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T07:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=1026"},"modified":"2024-01-15T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-15T08:30:00","slug":"women_detail_10","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=1026","title":{"rendered":"WOMEN_DETAIL_10"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\">WOMEN<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\"><strong>JUNE 22, 2023<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What Abortion Funds Saw After Dobbs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Helping people get abortions now requires way more logistics\u2014and cash.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile\" style=\"grid-template-columns:15% auto\"><figure class=\"wp-block-media-text__media\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" src=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/VesoulisAbby_900px.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1065 size-full\"\/><\/figure><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<ul>\n<li>ABBY VESOULIS<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Reporter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"432\" src=\"http:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/abortionfunds-travel-agents_2000c.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1062\" style=\"width:760px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/abortionfunds-travel-agents_2000c.webp 768w, https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/abortionfunds-travel-agents_2000c-300x169.webp 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong>Mother Jones illustration; Getty<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p><strong>It took more than a month<\/strong>\u00a0to pin down Megan Jeyifo, the executive director of the\u00a0Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF),\u00a0for an interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She\u2019s been understandably busy, growing CAF from an organization that served roughly 30 Illinois residents monthly in 2016 into one of the largest independent abortion funds in the nation. These days, upwards of 300 people from around the country call in on a weekly basis requesting emergency assistance\u2014a nearly 4,000 percent increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The number of employees on CAF payroll has grown, too. Last year there were a mere five, including one part-timer. Fast-forward some 365 days, and there\u2019s 14 staffers on board, with three more on the way by mid-summer.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe work of abortion funds is not new. The work of CAF is not new,\u201d says Jeyifo. \u201cThe scale is what is new.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Behind the necessary accretions, of course, is the\u00a0Supreme Court\u2019s June 24, 2022, decision in\u00a0<em>Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/em>, which\u00a0overturned fifty years of federal abortion protections\u00a0and passed the power to regulate, restrict, or ban abortion to individual states. Abortion funds, some of which have existed for decades, have been racing to keep up. And in contrast to their role before\u00a0<em>Dobbs<\/em>, which was primarily about funding the cost of abortions, abortion funds today are\u00a0increasingly taking on\u00a0the additional, time-intensive role of travel agents, all in the name of getting people to states where it\u2019s legal to have abortions at their respective gestational ages\u2014if at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before the Supreme Court handed down the\u00a0<em>Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0decision, obtaining an abortion in northern Wisconsin, for example, might take two days\u2019 worth of brief appointments and a couple hundred dollars. After\u00a0<em>Dobbs<\/em>, the state regressed to its\u00a01849 abortion law, which makes it a felony to provide any abortion except when necessary to save a mother\u2019s life. Now, a pregnant person from the same area may have to drive seven hours each way to Chicago and stay in a hotel to account for appointment times and recuperation. They might need more childcare because they are away from home longer. And more food and fuel because they are driving a far greater distance.\u00a0\u201cAfter May of 2022, everything kind of went to hell very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Abortion funds aren\u2019t just paying for these additional costs. They are also, in many cases, booking the arrangements with the clinics, airlines, hotels, and transit companies.&nbsp;Jeyifo credits a past life in the hospitality-restaurant industry as preparing her to \u201cbuild space into my day for fires,\u201d she tells me between bites of lunch. It\u2019s 2:30 pm in Chicago, and the first time she\u2019s eaten all day. \u201cPreviously it would be because a dishwasher broke or the meat order didn\u2019t come through. Now the stakes are a bit higher.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since 2017, when Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed a bill into law\u00a0expanding public funding of abortion\u00a0in the state, including to Medicaid recipients, CAF\u2019s money has gone further, enabling it to help people outside of Illinois. The thinking was that they wanted to help people get abortions wherever it was most convenient and cost-effective, and Illinois, which has long had more abortion protections than its neighbors, often made sense. But given the surrounding states\u2019 new abortion restrictions post-<em>Dobbs<\/em>, many now have no choice but to venture to Illinois. Data collected by the Guttmacher Institute and analyzed by\u00a0Bloomberg\u00a0in 2022 estimated that post-<em>Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0abortion restrictions would lead to an 8,000 percent increase in the number of women of reproductive age whose closest abortion provider\u00a0is Illinois, where CAF is one of the largest abortion-support organizations. Bloomberg estimated abortion-friendly California would see an influx of patients nearing 3,000 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Serving these out-of-state populations takes significant cash. About a year ago, CAF averaged giving $175 to people for the abortion procedure itself, plus $120 for other affiliated needs, like gas. Now the group pledges an average of $422 for abortion costs and $390 for miscellaneous extras, such as hotels and flights for out-of-staters.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>CAF isn\u2019t alone in vastly increasing its outlay post-<em>Dobbs<\/em>. The\u00a0Colorado Doula Project,\u00a0which provides abortion funding and other practical support, went from spending $275 on abortion funding and related expenses in August 2021 to $32,000 in August 2022\u2014a 11,536 percent surge. The fund\u2019s annual budget was $20,000 pre-<em>Dobbs,\u00a0<\/em>executive director Gina Martinez says.\u00a0Now, it\u2019s budgeting for $370,000, with some of the money going towards buying closed-toed shoes and warm layers for travelers from abortion-banned states like Oklahoma and Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Nevada, which has become a hub for pregnant people in abortion-banned Texas and abortion-restricted Arizona and Utah, the number of callers requesting assistance from the\u00a0Wild West Access Fund\u00a0has doubled from a weekly average of 12 to 15 in 2021 to 25 to 30 this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAfter May of 2022,\u201d president Macy Haverda says, referencing when the\u00a0<em>Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0decision leaked, \u201ceverything kind of went to hell very quickly.\u201d Her mostly volunteer-based organization had to hire a staff member to keep up with the new client volume. \u201cWe weren\u2019t prepared to do that,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing that\u2019s working for the abortion funds, amid the chaos, is what Martinez calls \u201csolidarity funding.\u201d Both she and Jeyifo mentioned nonstop group texts coming in on the encrypted messaging app Signal (they use it to protect the confidentiality of both their staff and clients, who in some places could be criminalized for seeking an abortion or helping someone obtain one). On these channels, the abortion funds can ask each other for help funding more expensive cases, ones in which, for example, a client is further along in a pregnancy or needs to travel a greater distance.&nbsp;\u201cHearing that abortion funds worked together to come up with $15,000 to pay for someone\u2019s abortion\u2014that to me is means to celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Martinez&nbsp;recalls one such client: a woman traveling from an abortion-banned island in the Caribbean to Denver. When I offhandedly mention that to Jeyifo, separated from Colorado by 1,000 miles, she chimes in that CAF is one of several organizations helping the Colorado Doula Project with this woman\u2019s case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s just a standard practice for abortion funds all over the country, all of whom are scraping pennies together every month to get by,\u201d Martinez says.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These are the little wins that bring joy and motivation to Oriaku Njoku, the executive director of the\u00a0National Network of Abortion Funds,\u00a0a group providing resources to over 80 abortion funds across the country. \u201cIt is rooted in so much happiness, and a commitment to this collective responsibility that we have to our communities,\u201d Njoku says. \u201cHearing that abortion funds worked together to come up with $15,000 to pay for someone\u2019s abortion\u2014that to me is means to celebrate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That doesn\u2019t negate the challenges, though. Abortion funds need more money for more people traveling further\u2014distances that may get even greater as more state abortion restrictions work there way through courts. The funds will have to sustain these&nbsp;growing needs and keep up with all the shifting regulations while also accounting for the fact that donations may eventually dwindle as the cause loses momentum. \u201cIt would be naive to think that people are going to be supporting us with the levels they have over the last year,\u201d says Jeyifo. \u201cHowever, I do think that there are enough people who recognize the responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before hopping off our call\u2014which likely only happened because I followed up to my persistent emails with a text\u2014Jeyifo tells me what keeps her grounded amid the chaos of running an abortion fund: jumping on the phone lines to work with clients herself. \u201cFiguring out numbers, and a budget, and development, and how to grow the staff, and how to figure out what insurance we can provide, or what our strategic plan is going to look like\u2014it is not as immediately gratifying as connecting someone to all the resources they need to get an abortion,\u201d she says.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But for Jeyifo, jumping back on the phone lines will have to wait for a bit. She has meetings to attend, dozens of Signal messages from other abortion funds to respond to, and 220 emails to read. She can mark at least two of those emails\u2014from me, asking for an interview\u2014off her list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Abortion Funds Saw After Dobbs It took more than a month\u00a0to pin down Megan Jeyifo, the executive director of the\u00a0Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF),\u00a0for an interview.\u00a0 She\u2019s been understandably busy, growing CAF from an organization that served roughly 30 Illinois residents monthly in 2016 into one of the largest independent abortion funds in the nation.&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/?page_id=1026\" class=\"\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">WOMEN_DETAIL_10<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":519,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"on","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":"","footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1026"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1068,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1026\/revisions\/1068"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aiecasia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}