While abortion rights are relatively protected in New England, funders are working diligently to remind their communities that legality does not mean access.
Abortion funds are local nonprofit organizations that provide abortion seekers with monetary support. While they are traditionally designed to pay for a patient’s abortion, funds also help with supplemental costs like transportation or lodging. Because these organizations provide crucial financial aid and on-the-ground practical support, their role in the abortion access movement has increased since the Dobbs decision.
This piece, based on three New England funds, is the second in a series of articles spotlighting interviews with fund representatives across the U.S. Since the fall of Roe, states in this region have been fairly protective of abortion. In spite of these protections, there are still abortion seekers in New England who need help accessing costly procedures. Funds also look for ways to support abortion seekers outside of their home states.
We interviewed representatives from Tides for Reproductive Freedom (Tides) in Massachusetts, the Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire (ReproFund), and the Women’s Health and Education Fund of Rhode Island (WHEF).
Tides for Reproductive Freedom (Tides)
Founded by Black, Indigenous and queer activists in 2018, Tides works with other Massachusetts funds to provide support for abortion seekers across the state. Abortion is legal in Massachusetts through 24 weeks. The state Constitution recognizes the right to abortion, and Massachusetts has a shield law that both requires commercial insurance to cover abortion-related care and protects providers, patients, and those who help abortion seekers from legal action.
We spoke with Feyla McNamara, co-founder and co-executive director.
Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire (ReproFund)
Though there are no state laws protecting abortion in New Hampshire, abortion remains legal in the state through 24 weeks. In New Hampshire, state Medicaid does not cover abortion care, except in very limited situations. The deeply divided state House has entertained (but rejected) bills ranging from one to enshrine the right in the state Constitution and another that would have banned abortion after 15 days.
We spoke with Autumn Houle, patient and outreach coordinator.
Women’s Health and Education Fund of Rhode Island (WHEF)
In Rhode Island, abortion is legal until “fetal viability.” This state, like many others, has a number of targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) laws that can make it a challenge for abortion seekers to find care. Rhode Island allows state Medicaid funds to be used for abortions.
We spoke with volunteer board members, Jamie McIntyre and Kelly Russell.
These interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and concision.
New England funds often leverage their close-knit communities to share information about the support they offer to those seeking abortions. More than one fund activist called their group “small but mighty”—acknowledging both the community-based approach, but also the power that comes with their smallness.
Jamie McIntyre (WHEF): The specialness of Rhode Island is that it is 45 minutes end to end. Rhode Island is all about community because we are so small. It’s lots of face-to-face and talking to businesses in the community. Everyone wants to help each other.
Feyla McNamara (Tides): It’s important to know that Tides is growing and changing. We are a small but mighty crew of individuals who have never done this before. I’d like folks to know that it’s possible to go out there and change systems.
Kelley Russell (WHEF): Our small but mighty team does a lot of shared responsibility. Whoever can jump in to do things at the moment does.
Rhode Island is all about community because we are so small. … Everyone wants to help each other.
Jamie McIntyre, Women’s Health and Education Fund of Rhode Island
Across the nation, abortion funds are structured differently, depending on their capacity and the needs of their communities.
- Some have full-time staff, while others are run by volunteers.
- Some funds (ReproFund and Tides) give money directly to abortion seekers, while others (WHEF) provide “block grants,” to local clinics. This is a pool of money that the clinics can use at their discretion when abortion seekers need funding.
Jamie McIntyre (WHEF): We are an all volunteer-based organization, and we are a small group. The fact that we do block grants is really important to our day-to-day operation. In order to have an intake hotline and be able to manage patients individually, [we would need a larger organization]. So block grants really lower the amount of work that we ask of our volunteers.
Autumn Houle (ReproFund): We have three full time staff members—our executive director and founder, a deputy director, and me (patient and outreach coordinator). It wasn’t until Roe fell that we really needed to raise funds so that we could pay people to do this work.
But I give all the credit in the world to our volunteers. They’re the ones who really make the fund what it is and carry out a lot of our day-to-day operations.Volunteer case managers work shifts on a 24-hour hotline. These volunteers are the ones connecting with abortion seekers in New Hampshire on a daily basis.
In addition, we have a team of volunteer abortion doulas who provide remote support.
And then there’s our big group of volunteer drivers—about 50 people all across the state who sign up to drive for us. If we have funded someone’s appointment, often the last remaining barrier is they don’t have someone to drive them, they don’t have gas, or they don’t have a car. The volunteers are all my personal heroes. We have an amazing network of volunteers, and many of them are also donors.
Feyla McNamara (Tides): I’m working on a big project designed to create a practical support program informed by our communities. We need to figure out how to use our resources wisely and as informed by our community.
The idea is to hear from folks: Is it loss of wages that need to be reimbursed when folks go seeking abortions? Would it be helpful to get child-care stipends for when you go for your appointments and after you’ve had your abortion? Is it meals? Is it after-care packages, like actual medical supplies at their homes? Are folks experiencing houselessness and don’t have a place to go after having an abortion?
All of those are questions that we have in the survey that we’re really excited about.
I’d like folks to know that it’s possible to go out there and change systems.
Feyla McNamara, Tides for Reproductive Freedom
Before Roe fell, funds began to see the writing on the wall. They took steps to prepare their volunteers and staff.
Autumn Houle (ReproFund): [We started asking], how could things change in New Hampshire? In New England? How can we help with the wider landscape in the country?
About a year before Dobbs, we started rolling out most of our practical support programs. We were anticipating that people would have higher needs and would be traveling more. Everyone on our team knew it was coming far, far before.
We beefed up our driver program and had conversations without volunteers, asking: Will you be willing to go out of state? To travel farther?
We also had internal conversations about needing a full practical support budget. It’s no longer just an abortion funding budget. We knew we’d need real money to book hotel rooms and flights for people. Gas money was hard for us. We didn’t know how to get that money to people without simply handing them cash, so we launched a gas card program and stocked our clinics in New Hampshire with gas cards that patients could pick up.
New England funds often engage in “solidarity pledging.” While they maintain their grassroots work in their home states, they recognize that Dobbs is a national concern and are actively participating in a network of aid that often reaches far beyond even their geographic region.
Autumn Houle (ReproFund): The most important thing that really changed for us was engaging in solidarity pledging abortion funding for someone who is in another state. We did a lot of prepping for people to be traveling to New Hampshire more for their care, and then didn’t see that happen as much as we thought. People were going to Washington, D.C., and New York, and we really wanted to still help out and use the funds that we had raised to help out in this post-Roe landscape. So we started the solidarity pledge program, and every day I feel like the need is greater and greater.
Feyla McNamara (Tides): Every day, our inbox is full of solidarity pledge requests. A big mission of Tides is to redistribute wealth outside of Massachusetts to other funds. Folks don’t really know who we are yet, but they will, and we hope to be able to answer those solidarity pledge requests more and more.
If we have funded someone’s appointment, often the last remaining barrier is they don’t have someone to drive them, they don’t have gas, or they don’t have a car.
Autumn Houle, Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire
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Increasingly, funds are providing practical support. Volunteers provide rides to appointments, childcare and lodging. Sometimes, several people help a single patient access care.
Autumn Houle (ReproFund): We had someone traveling to a clinic that was outside of our state from really, really far. This patient had faced so many barriers, and we had to get them several hours away. Our volunteer driver program was really not built for that. We had to pivot and pull together five or six drivers, which, to be honest, was not ideal. I don’t want our patients to have to interface with that many strangers to get where they need to be. But it was also at that point in care when that was really our only option, and I was just so astounded at our drivers’ ability to jump in at the last second, to completely rework their days and weeks to make this happen for someone that they didn’t know. We can fund abortions and connect people with doulas, and if they don’t have a way to get there, none of that matters.
That’s a moment that I go back to when I’m feeling burnt out from this work. And by communicating with her throughout that process, [I learned that] she felt held by strangers who were willing to do that.
We never expect gratitude from patients; patients just may not be in that place. They’re almost always so grateful, but we don’t expect it. And this person walked away from that situation, saying, “You know, if it’s ever possible for me, I want to be a driver. I want to give you my dollars.” It was a realization of how real this work is.
We’re building a movement that involves the people who we are helping. We’re bringing them into this movement. That’s real organizing. That’s real movement building. That happened very early on, and I’ve had several situations like that since, but as a person somewhat new to the movement, that was very formative for me.
Several of the activists we spoke with brought personal experiences to abortion access work.
Autumn Houle (ReproFund): I have a family history with abortion; my mom has had two. That really shaped our family. It allowed her to separate from an abusive partner and to economically move a little bit upwards.
Jamie McIntyre (WHEF): I have had two abortions, one in a red state and a blue state. One of the states was actually Rhode Island, and I did not know that WHEF existed. I did not know how to access funding. …
I think about young me. Where would I be if I didn’t have supportive people around me to be able to help me access both of my abortions? What would my life look like? What would my income look like? I’m 36 now. I would have an 18-year-old. My life would be really different.
Others were eager to contribute to an abortion organization that focused on access for low-income communities.
Kelley Russell (WHEF): I became interested in reproductive justice at a young age while volunteering at Planned Parenthood. But it came to be a focus in my life when I was working with low-income youth right after college. I saw the consequences of the lack of sexual education and access to resources, and that led me to go back to school.
Feyla McNamara (Tides): My friend was looking for people to join an intake team for an abortion fund. And I was like, “An abortion fund? What is that? That sounds awesome!”
When they explained it to me, I was even more intrigued because I come from a very low-income background. I have friends, family, people, loved ones in my life who have had abortions, and never had it occurred to me that somebody would be able to help you pay for the cost of your abortion. I was shocked that such a service existed and had existed in this area for a very long time. I don’t think we’re raised to think that there are resources, right? We’re not raised to think that there are places that you could ask for help if you needed it.
My mom has had two [abortions]. … It allowed her to separate from an abusive partner and to economically move a little bit upwards.
Autumn Houle, Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire
Reproductive justice is the “human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” For decades, reproductive justice advocates have declared that abortion activism must go beyond a framework of “choice.”
Though the New England fund activists we spoke with are deeply committed to these principles, they were hesitant to claim that their organizations had fully realized these ideals.
Autumn Houle (ReproFund): I’ll be the first to say that we don’t consider ourselves a reproductive justice organization. We absolutely follow the framework, and I would love to one day be there. But abortion access is just one part of that. We do want to have a voice on reproductive justice issues. For example, there were several funds that made statements in support of Palestine, and we were one of them [even though we were worried about donors].
Feyla McNamara (Tides): We definitely believe in reproductive justice, and we believe in the way that abortion access works with reproductive justice. In order to fully realize the entire mission of reproductive justice, we would have to be putting resources into not just ensuring people have access to abortion, but that people also have access to raising children and having children if they would like to.
My big dream is very similar to [All Options] in Indiana. They have a brick-and-mortar structure where you can access everything—abortion, diaper banks, adoption and childcare [resources]—all in one space. That’s always been a very appealing model to me because abortion is so frequently removed from the conversation when you talk about people who already have children. And that just doesn’t work with how I think about “whole people.”
Everybody at Tides is very “whole person” centered. We’re people who want to be able to access abortion and want to be able to access having children. It would be very exciting to see more funds able to live out the dream of reproductive justice. A lot of times we’re framed as baby haters or whatever, and it’s just so counterintuitive to the actual dynamics.
Fund activists feel so strongly about anti-racism and queer inclusivity that some have broken away from organizations where they don’t see those principles enacted. Others are restructuring their organizations to be more inclusive.
Feyla McNamara (Tides): At another fund, in 2012, there was a pretty strong divide between the volunteers and the board. It was off-putting for me as a Native person. But it didn’t deter me enough to not want to do the work, because it was really exciting to be able to talk to folks and say, “Yeah, let’s fund your abortion! Let’s make sure that you can get to your appointment!” Eventually, I was almost at my wit’s end with abortion funding because I thought it was just folks who didn’t think there was a need to grow beyond the way they’d always operated.
And then I went to the NNAF summit and I met Cara Callahan [from Planned Parenthood] and Kimika Ross, who was from another fund in Massachusetts. We had all gotten tired of fighting with these organizations and finally, in 2018, I said, “Kimika, I’m tired.” She said, “Me too.” And we decided, let’s just do it. Let’s start our own fund. … What broke the camel’s back for me was a board member, stone-faced, telling me that he had no idea what anti-racism had to do with abortion funding.
Kelley Russell (WHEF): The Women’s Health and Education Fund is an exclusionary name. I think our name change [which will be announced later this year] is so great because it is addressing several issues. Obviously, we want to be clear that we are a fund but also clear that we are serving everyone and anyone who needs access to services and that we are focused on engaging the community. We host events in spaces that are very LGBT+ friendly and have really great relationships with those places.
I think about young me. Where would I be if I didn’t have supportive people around me to be able to help me access both of my abortions? What would my life look like?
Jamie McIntyre, Women’s Health and Education Fund of Rhode Island
Since the Dobbs decision, this work has become more difficult. In addition to financially supporting patients’ procedures, abortion funders are also helping patients navigate confusing and ever-changing restrictions and bans and assisting them as they travel sometimes hundreds of miles to access healthcare. This work can take an emotional toll on activists.
Jamie McIntyre (WHEF): If we allow the heaviness of the work that we do to be with us all the time … that’s just a recipe for burnout.
Autumn Houle (ReproFund): Having the resources that we need to do the work is how we sustain it. When we were an unpaid volunteer board, the turnover was so high, and it’s not because people didn’t care or weren’t invested, but they literally couldn’t prioritize unpaid work. Making sure that our staff are compensated fairly, that it’s a thriving workplace with thriving wages is so important, and I want that for all abortion funds.
A tension that we often feel is, “Why should I accept a living wage, when, if I accepted less, we could fund more abortions?” And that’s just not a productive thought. We want to have the resources to take care of our staff and volunteers the way that they deserve. But we are constantly afraid that we’re going to get a call that we can’t fund, and we’re going to have to say no to somebody. In the long term, that does lead to burnout. We need our movement to be well-resourced, and we need that momentum that was happening at the fall of Roe to come back, because conditions on the ground have not changed since that happened.
We are constantly afraid that we’re going to get a call that we can’t fund, and we’re going to have to say no to somebody. In the long term, that does lead to burnout.
Autumn Houle, Reproductive Freedom Fund of New Hampshire
Feyla McNamara (Tides): We didn’t go after board members who would traditionally be on a board. We didn’t want our board to only be folks who give large donations. We wanted folks from the community who could really hold us accountable. The communities we serve don’t reflect a homogenized board of affluent white folks. I wanted to make sure that people know that we appreciate the time that they take to come to board meetings and the additional work that comes with that.
A lot of times with volunteering, you have to drive to a location, which means that you have to have reliable transportation and you have to pay for gas. You may miss a meal, so you may end up having to eat on the road or not eat at all. One of the ways that we approached putting together our board was offering a stipend to say thank you for their time.
Jamie McIntyre (WHEF): I was actually on the Supreme Court steps when Roe fell. That is a moment that is forever engraved into my mind. Namely, because I was not surrounded by people like y’all, or like myself; I was surrounded by anti-abortion folks who were cheering. They were cheering while I sobbed, and it was painful. So there’s pain for me, and pain for others.
But the joy is that the work is always there. The people that I get to connect with and be inspired by help me learn and grow.
One of the most beautiful lessons I’ve learned in this work is that I can’t do it all. What keeps me going is seeing each other in person, getting ideas and inspiration from other folks—especially if they’re in a state that has it way the heck harder than we do. If they can keep going, we can.
While abortion rights are relatively protected in New England, funders are working diligently to remind their communities that legality does not mean access. Their commitment transcends local boundaries, collaborating with organizations across the U.S. to support abortion seekers forced to travel for care.
Up next:
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