Abortion Funds 101

Back in May of this year, Alabama lawmakers voted to effectively ban abortion in their state. They passed an anti-abortion law that would make any doctor who performed an abortion guilty of a Class A felony - and could be sentenced to life in prison. Alabama’s ban came on the heels of similar efforts in Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia.

One of the organizations making abortion possible and accessible in Alabama is the Yellowhammer Fund. We found out about the Yellowhammer Fund like a lot of you - through social media in the aftermath of Governor Kay Ivey signing the alarming abortion ban into law. So a few weeks later, we talked with Amanda Reyes, Yellowhammer Fund Executive Director, right as the donations started pouring in.

Outraged Americans were looking for ways to help inside Alabama and Yellowhammer’s profile spread like GOT-style wildfire on social media. You might remember that Maggie Rogers raised over $17,000 for Yellowhammer Fund by donating the profits from her merchandise.

What’s more, it seemed like Americans were also learning about abortion funds in general, their purpose and what makes them different from say, Planned Parenthood. To be clear, abortion is still legal in Alabama, although it’s not readily accessible to many in the state - something the Yellowhammer Fund is trying to change. The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood have challenged the law, which was originally slated to go into effect in November, arguing that it violates Roe v. Wade.

*this interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity

ON HOW SHE GOT HERE

When I was an undergraduate I started the Alabama Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Justice. We started participating in clinic escorting in Tuscaloosa which is where University of Alabama is, where I'd gone to school and where I live now. We got a lot of people involved and started educating ourselves on the history of reproductive rights in Alabama, because this was also during the time when they were negotiating the details of the Affordable Care Act. Then I went to University of California Santa Cruz, working on a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness. I'm back in Alabama, still working on my dissertation.

When I came back in 2016 I started getting back into escorting. With the 2016 presidential campaign we got a lot of interest in people escorting because of the really highly charged rhetoric that Trump came out with surrounding abortion. It made a lot of people in our community scared, and so a lot of folks signed up to do clinic escorting because it was really one of the only things that we could do, right? After the election people wanted to do more, and a few of us had thrown around the idea of an abortion fund as something we wanted to grow into over the next several years. As we started to talk to more people about it we saw that there was energy there, and energy that we could tap into to at least start this fund. And so we did.

And by January of 2018, we were funding abortion.

ON ABORTION FUNDS AND ON YELLOWHAMMER FUND

Abortion funds are doing the things that our government won't.

The Hyde Amendment was passed in 1976.* Since then, there has been a need, especially among poorer people, whom the Hyde Amendment disproportionately affects. The Hyde Amendment has prevented a lot of people from even thinking or considering choosing abortion because they didn't have the funds. Abortion funds really stepped in after the Hyde Amendment. Abortion funds say your choice is not going to be determined by your bank account or what type of assets or insurance you have, it's going to be a human right. Abortion is a human right and so we're going to step in and subsidize the cost of this so that you can actually choose abortion if that's the choice that you want to make.

*HB Note: Passed in 1976, the Hyde Amendment bans the use of federal funds to pay for an abortion with the exception of a pregnancy that results in rape, incest, or endangers the life of the person carrying the pregnancy. This means the one in five women of reproductive age who rely on Medicaid can’t use Medicaid funding to access an abortion.

ON WHO ABORTION BANS REALLY AFFECT AND THE CASE FOR ABORTION AS HEALTHCARE

I feel like sometimes people don't talk about children and families enough when talking about abortion. Most people who get abortion, not just people who call abortion funds or are on Medicaid, already have one or more children. And usually when they are having an abortion they're saying that the reason for choosing abortion is because they don't have the resources, usually the financial resources, that they need in order to raise another child.

Adoption is not, for most people, an alternative to having an abortion. I mean the alternative to pregnancy is not to be pregnant, right? Abortion is the alternative to continuing a pregnancy, adoption is an alternative to parenting. There are even physical limitations. People sometimes need to have abortions because there are healthcare issues like needing to time pregnancies further apart so that you can properly heal from the previous birth.

Thinking about healthcare, thinking about poverty, thinking about our own physical health - there are all of these issues that surround abortion access. I think that a lot of people don't think about how integral the ability to get an abortion is to continuing your life. A lot of times abortion is literally a life and death issue because of what it means for their family and themselves.

Abortion is the alternative to continuing a pregnancy, adoption is an alternative to parenting.

AMANDA REYES

ON THE ALABAMA ABORTION BAN AND ON THE REPUTATION OF THE SOUTH

We're not homogenous. There are people like me who live here, and people who are supporters. We couldn't have gotten off the ground as an organization if there were not Alabamians giving up their money.

ON BOYCOTTING STATES WITH BAD POLICIES AS A PUNISHMENT

One thing I say about all of these boycotts [note: at the time of this conversation, the internet was alight with boycotts of Georgia’s and Alabama’s economies] is that most of the people who are calling for them on Twitter, they weren't coming here anyway. I mean Alabama, you weren't coming here. Like do you even know anything that's made in Alabama? Is everyone going to stop buying Mercedes in the United States? Because that's what you're going to have to do (We have a Mercedes plant and a Hyundai plant).

A boycott can be negative, especially when you're talking about somewhere like Atlanta, it's going to hurt. A lot of people who depend on that service industry and the entertainment industry and the tourism industry are at the most vulnerable levels. The people at the highest levels are not going to be harmed, really.

ON "MY 15 MINUTES LASTED LONG AS HELL" - CARDI B

It feels like you're flying an airplane while you're building it.

Cardi B said “My 15 minutes lasted long as hell.” Usually abortion rights don't get that. We haven't really experienced that since Roe v. Wade. We've had small gains, but most of the time we've been losing - especially the rhetoric game, especially the political game, even on the national level. Even people on the Left have felt that they need to take what they saw as a moderate stance on abortion and to say things that were pro life, but almost all of the people who are vying for that Democratic nomination donated to us in the wake of HB314. Almost all of them.

I got to talk to Bernie Sanders about abortion, which was wild because in the last election we tried to reach out to him and other elected officials on the national level and rarely got the time of day. But now people are banging down our doors to try to talk with us about what they should do. That's amazing and inspiring and really energizing. Resources are great, cash money is great because we get to pay for abortions, but it's also awesome to be able to be talk to people about the importance of making policy changes and the importance of fighting legal battles to get problematic policies overturned by the courts.

People are ready to fight on all of these different fronts now, and that is fantastic because you can't leave people behind. It's like Goonies-- never leave someone behind. It's like that.

ON ENGAGING WITH THE OTHER SIDE (OR YOUR OWN SIDE) AND FINDING MIDDLE GROUND

When I talk to people who are anti-abortion one of the things I find is that a lot of times they don’t like birth control anyway. So it doesn't make sense to try to talk to them about how birth control can reduce abortion. And they're against sex education. And they're against sex completely. When I was a clinic escort and we engaged with the protestors I would try to have conversations with them and at the end of the day it only came down to the fact that they see pregnancy and childbirth and raising a child as punishment for having sex. That's why I didn't really sympathize with people.

That's not a really productive place from which to build any kind of middle ground, but it has been politically what we've been told that we need to take this extreme position and find some way to compromise and build middle ground from there. And that's just not tenable because it fundamentally denies that people need sex.

ON SUCCESS STORIES AND FINDING MOTIVATION IN THE WORK

Every time we help someone is amazing. There are some people who we've helped that have been in more dire circumstances than others but every time we take a call, they're scared as hell and stressed and they're very nervous because they're talking to a complete stranger about having an abortion, and wanting an abortion in Alabama, and they're poor and they don't have the money. Every time I can tell someone that they're going to be able to make their abortion appointment you can just hear the lift in their voice. You can just hear that stress and fear go away because it's like they're like, yes, okay, I've got this, I'm going to get this taken care of and I can move on with my life. And every time that happens it gives me the biggest high. That's what keeps me going.

ON WHY SHE'S HOPEFUL FOR THE FUTURE

We fund abortions right now, but we really have started trying to lean into an identity as a reproductive justice fund and so this year we just added on a new Vice President of Reproductive Justice because Alabama has such high infant and maternal mortality rates.

We're working on a Reproductive Justice Resource Center which is our response to crisis pregnancy centers. The first phase of this Resource Center is the Birmingham Free Store, where we're giving out condoms, lubricant, menstrual products, prenatal vitamins, diapers, formula, bottles, baby clothes, nursing clothes, all kinds of stuff for folks who are at all stages of that spectrum. We're trying to do things like fund ultrasounds, fund prenatal care and fund doulas. We just got midwives in Alabama, so funding people to have birth with the support of midwives, stuff like that. We are really trying to make sure that people are getting all the kinds of care that they need and not just abortion care.

We started with abortion care because we saw that that was sort of an immediate and critical need and where we could immediately have an impact. With this influx of resources that we have received over the past few weeks we're now being able to make plans to make those things not just a 10-year pipe dream, but something that's actually on the horizon very soon. So that's fantastic.

ON HOW YOU CAN HELP

People need to start talking to other people about abortion. Talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors. That's what people really need to do, and that's free. They need to not be afraid of saying the word. Abortions are normal things that happen to people. One in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime.

Everybody has their own feelings about their abortion. But the most overwhelming feeling that people report feeling after their abortion is relief. Relief that they can move on with their life. And I think once we normalize it then we'll feel more comfortable with it as a society and we'll learn how nonsensical it is that we put so many restrictions on it.

WHAT'S ON HER BOOKSHELF

Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice by Naomi Ortiz

I think one of the things that I learned is how to take care of yourself and do this work at the same time. We can't pour from an empty cup. You have to have energy.

SHE'S OBSESSED WITH

Cardi B man, Cardi B. And Angela Baker. Angela is my guiding light. And Cardi B is just giving me energy, I can relate to her so much.

Want to donate to the
Yellowhammer Fund?

Head here to donate.

Interested in learning more about abortion funds?

Head over to the National Network of Abortion Funds.

Curious about the state policies on reproductive?

The Guttmacher Institute is a great place to start researching.