NEWS
How to talk about Abortion in your Community
How to talk about Abortion in your Community
Abortion Justice Values
How to Talk about Abortion in Your Community
Chicago Abortion Fund Website | Abortion Justice Now – Take Action!
Please note: This language does not constitute legal advice. All materials are for general informational purposes only. This document was created with information from the Trust Respect Access coalition and the Narrative and Culture Change sub-table of the Abortion Access Campaign.
Table of Contents
Abortion Funds & How You Can Support
What is the Chicago Abortion Fund?
Be an informed and affirming resource about abortion in your community!
Speaking About Abortion in an Affirming, Destigmatizing Way
Introduction
The fall of Roe v Wade is part of a concerted, white supremacist, radical Evangelical effort to strip the most marginalized of their autonomy and dignity. Bans on trans* healthcare for youth in Alabama, an anti-LGBTQ ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills, a backlash on “Critical Race Theory” that is whitewashing education – this is not solely about individuals in power, we must also strive for a transformative culture shift. This means we need collective action and long-term movement building to assert what we know is true: the majority of people who call this country home believe that abortion care should be protected legally, and ALL people deserve to have autonomy over their bodies and reproductive futures. No matter who they are, who they love, where they are from, or how much they make.
Two crucial pieces of this culture shift are being a resource for abortion access in your community. Read on for a compilation of information, messaging guidance, and calls to action in support of a future with abortion liberation at the grassroots level – with your community and the people you love.
Abortion Funds & How You Can Support
What are abortion funds?
When abortion is inaccessible, abortion funds break down barriers for people across borders and make care a reality. Alongside providing monetary support to put towards funding an abortion, funds may also provide logistical support (transportation, lodging, childcare, doula services, etc.), administrative support (connections to other abortion funds, information about insurance coverage, or more technical information about how to advocate for additional resources), and emotional support.
You can find and support your local abortion fund(s) by entering your address in the National Network of Abortion Fund’s fund locator. The National Network of Aboriton Funds is a network of over 80 organizations that are dedicated to moving towards a world we want to live in, where all reproductive options, including abortion, are valued and free of coercion. This nationwide coalition of frontline responders for people seeking abortion care support will be all the more critical as more people are forced to cross state lines to access care. Abortion funding is done in community, as funds work together to get people to the care they need, regardless of the barriers they face.
What is the Chicago Abortion Fund?
The Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF) is a 37 year old organization dedicated to removing barriers associated with accessing abortioncare in Chicago, Illinois, the midwest, and around the country. Put simply, we give people money, emotional support, and our deep logistical expertise so that they can access abortion care, no matter what. From January to March of 2022, we received calls from 1,500 who need support accessing abortion care, over 80% of whom were based out of state. We pledged over 250K to directly go towards the cost of people’s abortions, and $17K to provide wrap-around care (travel costs, childcare support, lodging, medical supplies, mutual aid grants, etc.). We were able to support every caller that we reached on our helpline, as we have been able to since 2019, due to the support of our community.
Funding abortion is a crusical form of mutual aid, and is also deeply linked to principles of reproductive justice and larger liberatory movement building. In other words, we do what we do to work ourselves out of existence. We dream of a world where everyone has the resources, community support, and freedom to make the decisions about their bodies, reproduction, and futures that they want to make, free from shame, stigma, and criminalization. In addition to direct support, CAF engages in organizing work to make connections between racial and economic justice and abortion access, destigmatize abortion, and offer a political home for our callers, people who have had abortions, and allies.
How you can support!
Abortion funds, providers, and clinics have decades of experience in getting people the care they need, and in supporting people facing barriers an abortion landscape that has been made intentionally difficult to navigate. It is important to support organizations that have roots and expertise in filling gaps, whether with time, money, or amplification. The scale of logistical lifts will only get more challenging and numerous in the face of a post-Roe world, as more people will be forced to travel further for care.
Due to the complexity of the work, it is always better (and safer!) to go to the people who have been supporting your community in accessing abortions and listen to/amplify their asks, rather than re-inventing the wheel! Find and support your local abortion fund(s) by entering your address in the National Network of Abortion Fund’s fund locator. See our most updated calls to action at Abortion Justice Now – Take Action!
Be an informed and affirming resource about abortion in your community!
It is important, especially as logistical difficulties increase, to be sure that factual, affirming information surrounding abortion access is easily available – and you can be one of those sources for the people in your life!
- Be aware of the fake clinics, or “Crisis Pregnancy Centers,” in your area and know how to identify them. Here is a map of fake clinics viacom
-
Be able to navigate and share sites that house information regarding abortion access, including (but not limited to):
- To find clinics near you:com
- To refer someone to an affirming counseling services for all pregnancy outcomes: all-options.org
- To connect someone with their local abortion fund, to assist with financial support and more:org/funds/
- To learn about self managed abortion: Pregnant people can safely self-manage their abortions up to 12 weeks. The reasons people decide to self-manage their abortion are as various as people’s lives. And we acknowledge the many many reasons one may not want to have an abortion in a medical environment. However, we also recognize that over-regulation, anti-abortion politics, and legal threats put people who manage their own abortions at risk of punishment, for what should be a protected decision. To learn more about legal rules regulating self-managed abortion visit If/When/How’s Repro Legal Helpline. For a campaign doing work to demystify SMA, see Abortion On Our Own Terms.
- Check out and share CAF’s toolkit for people seeking abortions.