USA – Loans and pawned belongings: abortion patients are increasingly going into debt

Abortion debt is swelling. Providers and groups trying to fill the void created by bans are buckling under the weight

Sarah Leonard
Sun 22 Dec 2024

Early this fall, a woman desperate for an abortion messaged the Wild West Access Fund, an abortion fund in Nevada, asking for support. She guessed she was nearly 20 weeks pregnant and didn’t have even a few hundred dollars to spend on the procedure. She wanted to prove she was doing everything she could to raise the money, and said she was trying to pawn her vehicle.

Over the next few weeks she bounced from clinic to clinic, trying to put the money together as the price of the abortion she sought continued to increase. The cost of a first trimester abortion is about $500, around $2,000 in the second, and a third trimester abortion can range from a few thousand dollars to around $25,000. Since the US supreme court eliminated federal protections for abortion, more than a dozen states banned the procedure completely, while others set gestational limits, increasing travel costs for pregnant people in those states.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/22/abortion-patient-debt

Jezebel’s Person of the Year Is Anyone Who Donated to an Abortion Fund

Jezebel hasn’t been around for 101 years, nor do we have a tradition of selecting one human to represent everything that's happened in 365 days. But the century-old publication that does have this tradition got lazy with it, so we decided to anoint our own.

By Lauren Tousignant
December 13, 2024

There are over 8 billion people in the world and yet, on Thursday, Time announced fuckass Donald Trump as its Person of the Year. For the second time.

He was last named as Person of the Year in 2016, which I get. He was a wildcard candidate running for president out of spite who shocked the establishment and lost the popular vote. He hasn’t done anything particularly different since then, especially not this year, when all he did was barely dodge a bullet. Sure he won the election, but let’s be real, it was not because he ran an impressive or strategic campaign. He picked the ickiest senator as vice president then held incoherent rallies where, if he wasn’t yelling lies about Ohioans eating cats and dogs, he was playing the “YMCA” and doing his stupid little dance.

Continued: https://www.jezebel.com/jezebels-person-of-the-year-is-anyone-who-donated-to-an-abortion-fund

13.12.2024

Opinion

abortion funds

Donald Trump

Jezebel’s Person of the YearJezebel’s Person of the Year

Lauren Tousignant

Person of the Year

United States

Number of US abortions fell by only 2% after wave of state bans, CDC report reveals

First major report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tallies abortion provision in the post-Roe US

Carter Sherman
Wed 27 Nov 2024

Despite the wave of state abortion bans that took effect after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022, the number of abortions performed in the US fell by only 2% that year, according to the first major report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to tally abortion provision in the post-Roe United States.

The findings in the report, released Wednesday, echo other research that has uncovered that US abortion rates have surprisingly risen in the years since Roe’s demise. In 2023, the US saw more than 1m abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortions and restrictions on the procedure – the highest number recorded in more than a decade.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/27/post-roe-abortion-rate

27.11.2024

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Society of Family Planning

United States

Health

How abortion rights groups are preparing for the next Trump administration

Abortion rights groups are pivoting away from ballot initiatives and starting to go on defense.

Shefali Luthra
November 21, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory has energized anti-abortion groups, even as abortion rights organizers notched victories on Election Day. Now, reproductive rights groups are preparing for legal and legislative battles in a new, less friendly environment.

They are planning to embrace a multipronged approach: challenging anti-abortion policies in court, organizing political protests, and lobbying state and national lawmakers to oppose proposed bans.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2024/11/abortion-rights-second-trump-administration/

Abortion Access for U.S. Immigrants

A reproductive epidemiologist explores the barriers and gateways to abortion access for U.S. immigrants

by Vida Foubister
October 28, 2024

During and for two hours immediately following the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in September, abortion was the most searched topic online, according to an analysis by New York University researchers. Not surprisingly, immigration came in second.

As Heidi E. Jones, a reproductive epidemiologist, and her co-authors noted in a recent Journal of Migration and Health article titled "Abortion Care Access and Experience Among U.S. Immigrants: A Systematic Review," "The geopolitical intersection between immigration and abortion policy makes this a particularly salient issue." With the election only weeks away, Think Global Health reached out to Jones to discuss the findings of her study and strategies she believes can help ensure greater abortion access among immigrant populations.

Continued: https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/abortion-access-us-immigrants

28.10.2024

immigrants and abortion

The Journey of an Abortion in South Carolina

When, at five months pregnant, Emma Giglio discovered her baby had multiple anomalies in utero, she and her husband made the heartrending decision to terminate their pregnancy. But that was just the beginning of her agony.

By Stephanie McNeal
Photography by Lindsey Shorter
September 5, 2024

It shouldn’t be this hard to find a birthday cake in a college town in suburban Maryland, even on short notice.

That’s what Emma Giglio thought as she walked up and down the busy streets, a bleak January air whipping her face. There were fast food joints, sports bars, casual restaurants offering every cuisine you could imagine. Just nowhere, seemingly, to buy a birthday cake.

Emma and her husband, Zach, kept going. Because they had to, even though at 24 weeks of pregnancy, Emma’s gait had changed. She was so much bigger with this baby than she’d been with her older sons, but that’s how it goes when it’s your third.

Continued: https://www.glamour.com/story/election-2024-the-journey-of-my-abortion-in-south-carolina

05.09.2024

Partners in Abortion Care

Siya Giglio

The Brigid Alliance

Zach Giglio

The Underground Network Fighting for Teen Abortion Access in Texas

How a group of nonprofits in Texas is working together to usher minors across state lines for crucial reproductive care

By Olivia Rockeman
Aug 28, 2024

Throughout their early teens, DakotaRei Frausto struggled with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a severe form of premenstrual syndrome, as well as anemia and chronic nausea. In 2021, at age 16, Frausto went to a handful of clinics in their home state of Texas to seek out a birth control prescription, hoping it would help address their symptoms. But each of the clinics brushed off their pain or referred them to brochures rather than getting them in front of doctors, and Frausto, feeling defeated, gave up on trying to access birth control.

Soon after, when Frausto was 17, they started to experience more severe PMDD symptoms than usual. A pregnancy test confirmed they were eight weeks pregnant. “When I did test positive, I knew for a fact abortion in Texas wouldn’t be an option for me,” Frausto said, noting that the state’s six-week abortion ban went into effect in September 2021. “My immediate next thought was: How am I going to scrape together the resources to travel?”

Continued: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a61973788/the-underground-network-fighting-for-teen-abortion-access-in-texas/

USA – The Truth About Jane

They were heroes, and human. They could be any of us.

Moira Donegan
Aug 19, 2024

“My fear was that an outsider would paint us as superheroes or Amazon warriors, as extraordinary,” writes Laura Kaplan, one of the members of the service known as Jane, in a 2019 preface to “The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service,” her exhaustive history of the Chicago feminist group that performed secret, illegal abortions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. “This is the opposite of the truth and certainly the wrong message to send to a younger generation.”

In the intervening years, Jane members have taken on an unusually active role in shaping the historical understanding of their work, and this is why. Hero worship has a distancing effect: it makes the object seem far away, alien, even semi-divine. It makes the revered people’s lives, their personalities, seem unlike your own. But Jane, Kaplan says, was not some exceptional or otherworldly group. “We were ordinary women,” she insists. “I hope that everyone who reads this history will see herself in us and think: that could be me.”

Continued: https://jessica.substack.com/p/jane-chicago-abortion-history

USA – ‘Perfect storm’ of crises is leading to cutbacks in abortion care, advocates say

By: Kelcie Moseley-Morris and Sofia Resnick
August 14, 2024

Advocates for abortion access say compounding crises of abortion bans, rising economic costs and systemic health care issues are beginning to cause significant funding challenges and potential disruptions to reproductive care of all kinds.

Several people described it as a “perfect storm” of problems with the U.S. health care system, particularly post-pandemic, and the rise of abortion bans and other reproductive care restrictions in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022. Many individuals must now travel hundreds or thousands of miles to seek abortion care, and the consolidation of demand at a smaller number of clinics is increasing wait times, which means pregnancies progress to a more advanced stage and the costs balloon further.

Continued: https://alaskabeacon.com/2024/08/14/perfect-storm-of-crises-is-leading-to-cutbacks-in-abortion-care-advocates-say/

14.08.2024

Commentary

Abortion Care Network

Abortion Fund of Ohio

abortion funds

barriers to abortion

Brittany Fonteno

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Erin Grant

Florida Access Network

Keep Our Clinics

Lexis Dotson-Dufault

Lisa Humes-Schulz

National Abortion Federation

National Network of Abortion Funds

Nicole Clegg

Oriaku Njoku

patient assistance funds

Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates

Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Planned Parenthood Great Northwest

Planned Parenthood of Greater New York

Planned Parenthood of Northern New England

Project 2025

Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro

USA – National Abortion Rights Groups Have the Wrong Priorities for Our Movement

There is an alarming disconnect between the agenda of our most powerful organizations and the real needs of abortion seekers and providers on the ground.

Chelsea Williams-Diggs et. Al
August 7, 2024

This piece was written and signed by a collective of abortion fund representatives. You can see the full list of writers and signatories at the bottom of the piece.

Two years after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the crisis of abortion access in America has reached a breaking point.

At the same time, Democrats are making abortion a central issue in their election-year campaigns, and their allies at well-funded national reproductive rights and health nonprofit organizations invest millions in vague, multiyear electoral strategies.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/abortion-funds-movement-crisis/