On Halloween night, as kids went trick or treating across the U.S., the Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF) hosted an emergency gathering for supporters and funders. The goal was to raise more funds to meet the increasing demand to access abortion care, regardless of who would win the presidential election the following week.
“CAF has spent all year growing our development capacity and sounding the alarm of the abortion access current crisis, and specifically the funding crisis,” Qudsiyyah Shariyf, the interim executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, told Salon. “We knew then that regardless of the election’s outcome, we need increased investment in our organization.”
Despite bans and anti-abortion policies, the actual number of abortions aren’t decreasing. According to a Monthly Abortion Provision Study, researchers found that the number of abortions in the U.S. increased by 10 percent in 2023 compared to 2020 and that year, abortion numbers were at their highest in over a decade. The Guttmacher Institute attributed the increased access to telehealth and financial support to the rise in spite of abortion bans.
More recently, a report published by #WeCount in October 2024 found a small but consistent increase in the national monthly number of abortions since October 2023, even in states with restrictive gestational limits.
“As abortion bans strip away access, the need for abortion care continues,” said Alison Norris, MD, PhD, #WeCount Co-Chair and professor at The Ohio State University’s College of Public Health and co-principal investigator of the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network.
But an impending Trump presidency comes at a time when abortion funds have already been forced to slash budgets as the reproductive rights landscape has rapidly changed across the U.S. In 2024, the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood’s Justice Fund had to cut their budgets from giving 50 percent assistance to people to 30 percent with no exceptions. When asked how abortion funds are preparing, Oriaku Njoku, the executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF), told Salon that abortion funds are resilient. This time around, as they have before, they will rely on their community and network of supporters. It’s both “familiar,” and “unfamiliar terrain,” Njoku said.
“Abortion funds are committed no matter what, to ensure that people still have access to the abortion care that they want and need on their own terms,” Njoku said. “It may look different, it may feel different, but that's the reality — even in the most restrictive times, people have still found a way to navigate through increasingly complex barriers to access abortion care.”
When one or two states make abortions harder to access, it affects states where abortions remain legal. A 2023 study published in JAMA Network Open found the number of out-of-state residents seeking abortions in Massachusetts rose to 37 percent in the four months after Dobbs. Some patients traveled from as far away as Texas. That’s where abortion funds come in. They help arrange travel, which can cost thousands of dollars, and provide funding for people who need to access care in states where abortion care is no longer accessible. But over the last couple of years, since the Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization which led to more abortion bans across the country, abortion funds have been pushed to the brink. Some are even running out of money.
Alisha Dingus, the development director at the DC Abortion Fund, told Salon the effects over the last two years will take decades to overcome.
“Even if we weren't dealing with a hostile administration, someone couldn't snap their fingers and restore all the access we have lost over the past two years,” Dingus said. “There are now states with no clinics or abortion providers — it will take years or decades to make abortion accessible again in places like Missouri, which voted to overturn their abortion ban."
Now, in the aftermath of the election, abortion funds also have to prepare for a landscape where abortion access is severely limited. For example, in Florida since the state’s Amendment 4 didn’t pass, despite 57 percent of voters in favor of it. It wasn't enough for the measure reach its 60 percent majority threshold, therefore abortion access will remain limited in the south. According to Florida’s law, it remains a felony to perform or actively participate in an abortion six weeks after gestation, with limited exceptions that are designed to be difficult to use and frequently act as another burden for patients to overcome. Njoku said the next step for abortion funds in the wake of the Amendment 4 results is to gain more support for the next time a similar vote comes up, and that requires a deeper understanding of why some voters cast ballots for Trump as president and in favor of Amendment 4.
“Is the shared value between those voters autonomy, and self-determination, which is inherently a reproductive justice value?” Njoku said. Once organizers can tap into those values and find a “shared understanding,” the goal is to have an “overwhelming majority” to win a similar measure in the future.
In the state of Missouri, Amendment 3 passed, which will enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution and overturn the state’s current ban. Despite a loss in Florida, this would hypothetically ease the pressure on abortion funds by expanding access. However, as Dingus said, advocates say it will likely take time for that to be felt throughout abortion fund networks.
“It is undeniable that abortion access is popular,” Shariyf, from CAF, told Salon. “However, the long-term impacts of clinic closures on the abortion access ecosystem, means that despite the win of the Missouri ballot measure, it will be years before Missouri is able to offer abortion care at the scale that Missourans need.”
Shariyf pointed out how there was only one abortion clinic in the state before the total ban went into effect.
“Hope Clinic in Granite City, Iliinois, just across the river from St. Louis, continues to see the vast majority of their patients traveling from out of state, most of them from Missouri,” Shariyf said. “We do not anticipate that the Missouri ballot initiative will have an immediate or drastic impact on those numbers.”
In Arizona, voters passed Proposition 139 amending the state constitution to provide a fundamental right to abortion. Shariyf said hopefully this state will serve as “an essential resource” in the Southwest, including Texas.
Ultimately, abortion funds are focused on the future and maintaining access where and when they can throughout the United States.
“A lot of money was spent on political campaigns and ballot initiatives and now we are in a reality where for the next four years, all we can hope is for things not to get worse,” Dingus said. “And that means many people will still be forced to travel to places like DC for abortion care.”
