United States Abortion Resources

By: Anime Feminist December 6, 20210 Comments
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National Network of Abortion Funds

A comprehensive site with lists of abortion providers in the United States, connections to doctors, and links to donation funds.

THE BRIGID ALLIANCE

A charity that works to safely and confidentially connect patients in need of abortive services with health care providers.

Where to Donate and How to Help Keep Abortion Legal (Teen Vogue, Elly Belle)

Includes links to grassroots movements and abortion funds specific to helping marginalized pregnant people.

While the abortion bans being passed in states around the country are misogynistic in nature, it’s necessary to keep in mind that the language we use and the causes we support shouldn’t be trans-exclusionary — because abortion access affects more than just women. Cisgender women are not the only ones who need access to abortions and other forms of reproductive health care, and it’s often harder for transgender and nonbinary people to access the care they need.

Donating to LGBTQ-centered organizations, like Magic City Acceptance Center, in Alabama, and other local LGBTQ centers, helps them support people who are already largely discriminated against in the health care field. In addition, when we talk about abortion, who it affects and who we need to protect and fund access for, engaging in conversations that center people who need abortions instead of just women makes sure we’re not excluding anyone directly affected by the conversation.

“Uplifting people of color and LGBTQ+ people in this fight is critical. These groups are too often left out or not centered when they are the ones that are disproportionately affected by these bans, especially in lower-income communities,” Jordyn Close, a black abortion storyteller and URGE state coordinator told Teen Vogue. “Uplifting these people as well as POC and LGBTQ+ orgs is the only correct way to make progress as a movement.”

The Crisis of Crisis Pregnancy Centers (The Public Health Advocate, Jill Litman)

These centers, and others that use some variation on “crisis center” or “pregnancy center,” are often Catholic-run and are primarily aimed at pressuring patients to keep their pregnancies above all else.  

For example, the website for Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center located in Pleasanton, California, encourages women to delay their abortions by emphasizing that miscarriage is an alternative to getting an abortion. On their website, it reads, “Since up to 24% of all pregnancies end in a natural miscarriage, it is important to ensure you are not considering a procedure that may not be necessary.” Crisis pregnancy centers will often use deceptive tactics such as this to convince women to postpone their decision until they are far along enough in their pregnancy that they are no longer legally eligible to obtain an abortion.

By removing the requirement for crisis pregnancy centers to inform women about the reproductive services that are available to them, the recent Supreme Court ruling jeopardizes women’s ability to access the healthcare that they need. Dr. Kristin Luker, the co-founder and faculty director emerita of the Center of Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law, believes the Supreme Court ruling, as well as future legislation concerning reproductive rights, has the potential to have a large impact, especially on marginalized populations.

What an America Without Roe Would Look Like (The New York Times, Claire Cain Miller and Margot Sanger-Katz)

An overview of the state-level impact a repeal of the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling would look like.

In some ways, a post-Roe America would mirror the pre-Roe one. Then, abortion was generally legal in four states, and 13 more allowed abortion for health reasons. Women who could afford it would travel out of state to seek the procedure. But many women turned to coat-hangers, chemicals, unskilled abortion providers and other dangerous methods. In the early 1960s, Cook County Hospital in Chicago was treating more than 4,000 women a year for life-threatening effects of botched illegal abortions.

Now, there are safer options. In contrast with the 1960s, the internet has made it easier for women to learn where they can find a legal abortion or order black-market pills that can safely and effectively end pregnancy up to 10 weeks. Already, many American women order such pills online or cross the border to Mexico, where they are sold over the counter as ulcer medicine. Aid Access, a group that connects women with European doctors and pills from India, will work with women in all 50 states.

It is technically illegal to sell prescription medicine to American patients from another country without a prescription from a doctor licensed in the United States, but enforcement is difficult. Some states are already adding restrictions: On Thursday, a law went into effect in Texas banning medication abortion after seven weeks; it makes it illegal to provide the pills, not to take them.

Ensuring Access to Safe Abortion Care for Black Women (In Our Own Voice)

A pamphlet focused specifically on the importance of abortion access in conversation with the Black community.

Black women account for 28 percent of all U.S. abortions, although they make up just 13.4 percent of the U.S. female population. A variety of factors results in this disproportionately high abortion rate compared to women of other races and eth-nicities. These include a greater likelihood of being low-income, unemployed, uninsured, and being insured by programs that restrict abortion coverage.

•  Three-quarters of U.S. abortions are to women who are living in poverty or earning low incomes. There is a clear connection between earning a low income and not being able to access contraceptive and abortion care services. Black women’s poverty rate (25.7%) is more than twice as high as white women’s (11.7%), and one-and-a-half-times higher than all U.S. women (15.5%).

•  Even as the unemployment rate is decreasing, Black people are most impacted by employment barriers connected to structural racism, and experience unemployment at higher rates than other racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. Black women’s unemployment rate is nearly twice that of white men’s.

•  14 percent of Black women are uninsured, compared with only 8 percent of white women.

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