EDITOR’S NOTE: 

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.

As representatives of local abortion funds across the country, we of course support any political efforts to expand abortion access in the future. But we also want to pose this question to the elite sectors of our movement: Where is your strategy to increase abortion care right now, when it has never been needed more?

Local abortion funds from across the country are eager to share their perspectives and expertise on the challenges of funding abortion in their area, and the frustrations that are brought on by the failure of national reproductive health, rights, and access organizations to attend to the needs of so many pregnant people on the ground.

There is an alarming disconnect between abortion funds, grassroots organizations that are actually providing access to abortion, and large national organizations that are advocating for access.

Local abortion funds were founded as a direct result of the shortcomings of Roe v Wade, which, though it ensured a basic right to some abortion care, enshrined a limited framework that proved vulnerable to conservative assaults long before Dobbs. Abortion funds created a bridge between the theoretical right to an abortion and the real-world ability to access that right for the most marginalized. Local funds know their unique community needs best and work tirelessly to meet them through case management, emotional support, arranging travel and logistical support, and directly covering the costs of abortion care. Unlike national funds, most local funds have no client requirements or restrictions–such as around gestational age or income–and trust the people who seek their help as the experts in their own lives.

Since the Dobbs decision, and subsequent enforcement of extremely restrictive state laws, local funds have used their decades-long expertise, deep relationships, and infrastructure to collectively meet this moment of crisis and support the growing number of people struggling to access abortion. This is despite skyrocketing travel and appointment costs. For the Kentucky Health Justice Network, travel costs have grown by over 500 percent since Dobbs. While the expenses, misinformation, and fear tactics continue to rise, local abortion funds have doubled down on their commitment to supporting their callers, no matter what.

By contrast, some national funds with resources that our organizations could only dream of are making it harder, not easier, to get abortion care. In June, for instance, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) announced that it would be cutting back on the amount it gives people who qualify for its financial assistance program. Where the NAF previously paid for 50 percent of the cost of care, it will now pay for just 30 percent, with no exceptions for exceptionally high abortion prices later in pregnancy. For example, an abortion seeker in Nevada who qualifies for NAF assistance will now be responsible for $1,330 of their $1,900 procedure. This is a significant change from the $800 they would be responsible for under the previous NAF funding parameter. Planned Parenthood also announced similar cuts to its Justice Fund program.

These groups blamed their decision on budget constraints, but their resources dwarf anything local funds can provide. For instance, Planned Parenthood received $275 million in 2022 from just one donor. Every budget is a reflection of priorities. The choice of these well-funded, national organizations to drastically deprioritize their assistance will be felt by abortion seekers and their local abortion funds who will be called upon to bridge a much larger funding gap on tightening budgets. Local and regional abortion funds are often underfunded, understaffed, or volunteer-led. This decision will spread them even thinner, and make accessing abortion care even more difficult.

Then, on Tuesday, June 25, the newly formed Abortion Access Now coalition held a celebration to announce its not-so-new plan to advocate for abortion access in the next decade (not “now” as the name suggests). During this launch, which we watched live, one of the speakers went so far as to say that national groups were the ones holding together the gaps in access since the Dobbs decision. This statement is not only incorrect but an erasure of the work of local abortion funds that have been coordinating access for individuals across the country despite increasingly hostile conditions.

But while the statement was offensive, it was also a telling encapsulation of the warped perspectives and priorities of the most powerful groups in our movement. The national organizations that comprise the Abortion Access Now coalition fundraise endlessly, siphon support from institutional funders and grassroots donors, capitalize on the Dobbs rage donations, and funnel that money into campaign bank accounts. These groups already largely operate hundreds of million-dollar budgets. This is all being done with the promise that this time they’ll be successful in getting their ducks in a row in Congress and repealing the Hyde Amendment. It’s a great idea (and one that abortion funds also dream of), but this campaign is a gross abuse of funding and publicity that deprioritizes actual access to abortion care right now.