New York City Welcomes Growing Number of Out-of-State Abortion Patients

“The New York Abortion Access Fund, which pays clinics directly for low-income patients’ abortions, ‘immediately saw an influx of out-of-state callers’ after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last June, said Chelsea Williams-Diggs, the organization’s interim executive director….

The majority of people seeking help from the fund are New Yorkers, Ms. Williams-Diggs said. But since the Supreme Court ruling, the fund has helped people from 29 states and Washington, D.C., as well as six other countries.

Right after the ruling, the majority of out-of-state callers phoned in from Ohio, which had a ban at the time (it was later blocked by a judge). Now, the majority of out-of-state callers are from Texas, Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania, where abortion remains legal but where certain restrictions are in place, Ms. Williams-Diggs said….

Ms. Williams-Diggs said she was proud that officials were “passionate and committed to making New York an access state,” but she noted that the fund was struggling to keep up with the surging demand.

Last year, the fund spent $1.2 million to help 1,800 callers, compared to just over $500,000 in 2021, Ms. Williams-Diggs said. This year, the organization is on track to spend more than $2 million, a figure she said was concerning because “we just simply don’t have that money in the bank.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/nyregion/abortions-out-of-state-nyc.html?referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR1KW-cICKwdwq8y0I2xgdi-witgEs30RaZd0yxbVVYtI-Atrkjf-9wygb4

We want to take a moment to share what NYAAF has been up to over the past year since we began a process of transformation. While we’ve continued our essential work of funding abortions, NYAAF has been quieter this year as we transition to become a smaller, more collectively-run, and women-of-color-led body.

Spurred by a long overdue internal reckoning with our disconnect from caller experience, NYAAF embarked on a transformation period in the spring of last year. While we continued to operate our helpline and fund abortions, we paused on other work — including external communications, recruiting new volunteers or board members, new advocacy campaigns, and hosting events unrelated to the call line. 

We used this period as an opportunity to stop cycles of harm by investing in community building, restorative justice, values alignment, strategic planning, organizational restructuring, and the transfer of leadership to existing board members who more closely represent our callers. We approach this work humbly, with a shared commitment to growth. and recognition that there is still so much work to be done to better represent and serve the holistic needs of our callers and their communities, as well as to better be in line with our broader movement of abortion funds and reproductive justice organizers. Through our ongoing strategic planning, we hope to reimagine and rebuild NYAAF.

During this period we completed the following:

• Relationship and trust building – meeting up in person for the first times since the beginning of the pandemic.
• Restorative justice circles.
• Co-authoring a harm response plan.
• Enlisting a strategic planning consultant and initiating a strategic planning process, including a multi-day retreat.
• Restructuring our leadership structure to be more collaborative and building trust as a smaller, multiracial group.
• Changing our funding protocols to become more caller-centric — eliminating unnecessary screening questions and embodying deeper trust in callers.
• Distributing the most funds in our history — more than $720,000 pledged in the past year to around one thousand callers. During this time, we were proud to meet 100% of caller need.

While necessary, this transformation period has not been easy. We have gone from more than 20 active board members to now only 6  — all volunteers, all with day jobs and other commitments. Additional harm has been done as we’ve struggled together to confront how anti-Blackness and abortion stigma show up in our work and the abortion access landscape, and we have had to address that as it has emerged. We know that this work requires ongoing dedication, and we are committed to doing it together. 

Further, the state of abortion access across the nation has continued to shift. Caller need has grown as our lines have gotten busier and our pledges have gotten larger. But our relationship-centered work gives us the foundation to nimbly respond to this inflection point for our movement.

Because we have invested in building a stronger organization and building relationships with one another, we are in a stronger position to face the challenges of this moment. Our movement’s strength depends on a foundation of right relationship. 

Questions? Feedback? We’re here to be in conversation with you. We hope to share more with you about our transformation work soon, including during our in-person Fund-a-Thon celebration at Cafe Erzulie in Brooklyn on Sunday, May 22. RSVP here. We deeply value this community and look forward to filling the backyard with fellow activists and supporters! Please join and spread the word.

Yours in partnership,The NYAAF Board: Ambika, Chelsea, Julia, Karla, Maddy, Puja

NYAAF Board Member Vanessa Rios was on WNYC in September, talking about abortion rights and abortion access in New York State. Listen here!

The New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF) supports anyone who needs assistance paying for an abortion in New York State, or for New Yorkers seeking care elsewhere. The New York Abortion Access Fund believes that every person should be able to determine their own reproductive destiny and have access to the resources, rights, and respect to be able to do so. We believe that access to affordable abortion care is a critical component of full-spectrum healthcare services. 

We are an all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) organization, and we rely on our community to provide funding to our callers. You can make a donation to NYAAF through our website by clicking here.

We are a member of the National Network of Abortion Funds, a network of abortion funds across the country. If you want to support Texans seeking abortion, we suggest you donate directly to abortion funds in Texas. A list of those funds–and a link to donate to them all at once–is available here.

If you need assistance paying for an abortion, please call our helpline at 212-252-4757 and leave a voicemail. Someone will get back to you within 24 hours.

Thank you for your support!

Thanks to our entire community NYAAF raised over $47,000 for abortion access through this year’s Fund-a-Thon! While we didn’t quite make our goal of $60,000, we have so much to celebrate. Every dollar raised will go directly to building power and funding abortion in New York, ensuring that NYAAF can serve every person who calls our helpline.

We participate in Fund-a-Thon every year because we believe that funding abortion is an act of community care. NYAAF is able to be there for callers year in and year out because our community is there.

We want to extend a special thanks to the Rochester and SyracuseDSA chapters for joining powers to host a trivia party for NYAAF, and the SuffolkDSA for hosting a raffle for abortion access.

Also! If you still want to make a gift to Fund-a-Thon it’s not too late! You can make a donation here and note in the comments that it’s for Fund-a-Thon.

Thank you!