With Florida’s six-week abortion ban now effective, access to reproductive health services has weakened beyond the Sunshine State, affecting abortion seekers in the South, making the work of those who help people access abortion even more crucial.

On May 1, Florida law changed from a 15-week abortion ban, to six weeks, which is before more than one-third of people find out they’re pregnant, according to Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health, a research program at the University of California-San Francisco. This decision is a devastating blow to abortion access in the south, as Florida had become a go-to hub for abortion seekers in neighboring states that have bans. According to the Tampa Bay Times’ analysis of Florida Agency for Health Care Administration data, the number of people traveling to Florida to have abortions tripled during the past 5 years as strict or total bans were implemented around the country.

Jessica Hatem, executive director of Emergency Medical Assistance (EMA), an abortion fund in Palm Beach County, Florida, says that in the final weeks before the ban was effective, the group supported many Southerners and will continue to do so, though the earlier gestation limit will force more people to travel further. Though EMA is seasoned in organizing abortion travel, Hatem says the journey can be very intimidating to some people, and traveling to places like Illinois during colder months adds additional factors while planning.

“Even though travel can still be a lot to navigate from a southern state to another southern state, I think sometimes it feels even more intimidating if you’ve never left your community before to go to the north. Especially when we’ve had people navigate this through the winter and people in the deep south don’t necessarily have coats or you know, proper winter attire. So it’s going to be a big hit,” Hatem told Reckon.

According to Planned Parenthood, a medicated abortion can cost up to $800, but averages around $580. Abortion travel increases the overall cost of accessing care, as additional costs such as childcare, lodging, and gas, need to be considered. Before Roe was overturned, Chicago Abortion Fund paid an average of $120 per person in wraparound costs to support travel, lodging, childcare, pan medication, and more. In 2023 the price reached $400, with 40% of people they served needing wraparound support, according to Business Insider.

Most Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency expense, according to Bloomberg. This is where abortion funds come in, providing money, answering questions, and connecting out-of-towners to clinics in places where they can legally access the care they need. The community of people who work for or volunteer with abortion funds is very interconnected, as the work requires people who live in different states to communicate and coordinate with each other.

Here are 5 organizations funding abortion now, and why their work is crucial:

Emergency Medical Assistance

Last year, 1 in every 3 abortions in the South happened in Florida, with over 9,000 abortion seekers traveling from other states, according to Guttmacher Institute. Though the six-week ban has tightened the timeline for getting an abortion, Florida abortion funds have infrastructure already in place to assist people who need to travel.

Jessica Hatem, executive director of EMA says that collaborating with fellow funds is essential to making abortion travel happen for those forced to flee to neighboring states like Illinois and Washington, D.C. She said that though North Carolina is the closest state for patients to access care, EMA primarily serves people with low-income or no income, who often cannot afford to work around the state’s mandatory waiting period.

“It’s kind of a misconception about people going to North Carolina which technically is physically the closest to Florida, and they’re 12 weeks, but since they have a 72 hour in-person waiting period, that’s not feasible for most people because it’s a full three days of being in North Carolina without your procedure,” said Hatem.

EMA and many other abortion funds, don’t solely provide money for abortion procedures or pills, but supply payment for all of the hidden aspects of traveling for abortion like flights, hotels, rideshares and food, as well as offer support on how to navigate travel.

“Much like it can be someone’s first time flying, it can also be someone’s first time using an Uber or Lyft, as well, so sometimes all of this is new [to them]. And it’s not just simply paying for these things, which we do, but it’s also the logistics behind walking them through that process, being available to them while they travel if they have questions, all of that.” said Hatem.

Hatem says as more unnecessary blockers are put in place, the work of abortion funds is becoming even more crucial, because they are often the only groups filling these gaps in care and sexual health resources.

“People’s needs are becoming increasingly unmet, the circumstances are becoming increasingly hostile, and we’re the ones that are able to step up and assist people as these systems around us continue to fail,” said Hatem. “We also do a lot of the most radical work within our communities, even the funds that are still operating in full ban states are providing some amount of sex education because again, there’s not good information out there about reproductive health care as a whole.”

Abortion Care of Tennessee

Tennessee has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, with abortion completely banned except in limited cases to prevent the death of a pregnant person, forcing almost all Tennesseans in need of an abortion to travel. Vice president and founder of Abortion Care of Tennessee, Robyn Baldridge told Reckon that their organization primarily funds cost of procedures by putting block grants into clinics in neighboring states that are specifically reserved for Tennessee patients.

In April, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill criminalizing so-called “abortion trafficking” making it a misdemeanor to help a minor cross state lines for an abortion, except with notarized parental consent, according to the Center Square.

“I think that that’s a really important conversation we need to be having,  there’s always this focus on the kids, there’s always this focus on minors,” said Baldridge. “It’s just the beginning of criminalization for people like us who do the work, out-of-state patients themselves, doctors, it’s just like the beginning of being able to roll out more legislation.”

She said that laws like this should serve as a wake up call, especially for people who live in access states, to not fall into a false sense of security.

“There’s this understanding of oh, well, abortion funds exists and so someone can at least travel out of state, and not really realizing how from the beginning even though they said that reversing Roe was going to be about states rights I knew that especially in Tennessee, they were always gonna eventually start criminalizing people trying to access it out of state,” she said.

She said that the reason why maintaining abortion funds is so crucial boils down to freedom.

“Abortion funds are doing just the real practical on the ground work to help us all get free.”

DC Abortion Fund

Some abortion funds are getting creative in their efforts to ensure they can continue to serve their communities. The National Network of Abortion Funds is currently hosting a Fund-a-Thon through the end of May, with funds around the country hosting virtual and in-person events to raise money.

DC Abortion Fund’s inaugural My Body My Festival three-night festival takes place this weekend from May 16 to 18. Communications manager Jade Hurley described the event as an abortion de-stigmatization and fundraiser project born from the community of femme and queer artists the organization has built over the years.

“It is so often the musicians, the dancers, the ceramicists, who come to our aid and come to fund for us first before, you know, the politicians and the city officials and it’s always been that way for DCAF,” she said. “So we thought to ourselves, we feel like we know enough people to make a music festival.”

She said the festival will act as a way for people to engage in feminism and abortion politics through music, even if they don’t normally interact with politics or abortion access content. A March 5 brief by Duke University shared an increased concern for voter fatigue in the 2024 election, and the rollout of social media tools like Meta’s Political Content Control setting are making it easier for the public to tune out information that they’re tired of seeing.

“You know, we’ve all been pretty objectively traumatized by our politics over the last couple of years, but that really hurts places like abortion funds which are trying to reach people using political messaging and doing culture change work,” she said.

Hurley says events like this help ensure their message gets across and reaches more than those already engaged with abortion funds.

“Someone brings up My Body, My Festival and you’re like I’ve seen those posters everywhere, that sounds really cool. You’re not thinking, this is time for me to get politically active with my local abortion fund. You’re thinking, this is a community event. This is something really fun. This is something I want to go to every year. And so we’re trying our best to engage all the kinds of audiences we have here in DC,” she said.

Indigenous Women Rising (IWR)

Indigenous Women Rising helps Native and Indigenous people build community and access both abortion and midwifery or doula care. It was created while IWR co-founder and executive director Rachael Lorenzo (they/them) worked on the Respect ABQ Women campaign in 2013 to defeat a local anti-abortion ballot measure, and experienced an isolating and “not great” abortion experience themself.

“I just don’t see Native folks represented in the reproductive justice movement. We’re left out of the conversation a lot of times and over the years, it’s become more clear to me that there’s a lack of understanding and cultural competency within the movement,” they said. “We’re not the end all, be all because Native people are not a monolith, but we deserve to have culturally respective access to education and healthcare.”

Lorenzo says that for IWR, paying for a person traveling for abortion typically costs $1500. As the “rage donations” following Dobbs dwindle down, raising money has become increasingly important but remains a second priority to building and serving their community.

“A lot of our monthly donors are actually low-income folks [who donate] $1 dollar a month or $5 a month max. It’s really incredible to see how little people might have but they want to give because they know it goes into the community and I’m really proud of that, and I do not take that lightly,” said Lorenzo.

Tucson Abortion Support Collective (TASC)

Last year, the Tucson Abortion Support Collective distributed almost $350,000, according to collective member Hannah Taleb, who also says that client safety and privacy is a top concern for their operation.

“We’re really big on not keeping any data on our clients, so we actually delete everything from our Google intake forms,” she said. Though this makes it difficult to determine exactly how many people they serve, she said that she estimates they help about two dozen to 50 callers per week.

On April 12, the Arizona Supreme Court voted to uphold an 1864 law, banning abortion except in cases where the mother’s life is threatened. Later that month, Gov. Katie Hobbs signed a bill to repeal it. This reproductive rights yo-yo effect illustrates the day-to-day changes in policy abortion fund volunteers and staff navigate as they figure out how to ensure people who want or need abortions are able to have them.

Reckon spoke to Taleb before the 1864 law was repealed, and she shared optimism towards the future of reproductive rights in her state.

“There are so many places you can give money to and just know that all of these groups, we are going to be committed to getting people abortions no matter what happens in 45 days,” she said. “Abortion finds a way and we’re going to help people figure it out.”