Shared Offering for January 2023: The Chicago Abortion Fund

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Each month a selected organization is chosen to receive offerings from our congregation. You may donate to the social action offering for the month in one of the following ways:

The Chicago Abortion Fund is our shared offering organization for January. The Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF) provides financial, logistical, and emotional support to people seeking abortion care in Illinois and the Midwest.
CAF is the major abortion fund in the Midwest and is our local fund, supporting patients at the Champaign clinic.
Increasingly, in our community since the fall of Roe v. Wade last June, acting locally has become virtually the same as acting nationally. In 2022, Planned Parenthood of Illinois provided abortions for patients from 30 states, and the Champaign clinic provided abortions for patients from 11 states.

The Chicago Abortion Fund supports people from all 50 states receiving care at Planned Parenthood clinics, independent clinics, hospitals, and telehealth providers across the Midwest.
CAF hears from over 500 people a month seeking help for accessing care and returns 100% of calls.

“We support people through our relationships with over 55 clinics in 7 states across the Midwest. We provide funding for appointments, wrap-around and practical support like gas, lodging, childcare, and food. We support with clinic selection, insurance counseling, and other logistical considerations. We stay with our callers every step of the way.”

According to the Guttmacher Institute:

“The US Supreme Court’s decision in June 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade has had disastrous effects on abortion rights across the country. Abortion is currently unavailable in 14 states, and courts have temporarily blocked enforcement of bans in eight others as of December 12, 2022. Even in states where abortion is available, the influx of patients from states with severe restrictions has created lengthy waiting times for the procedure.”

“… abortion bans particularly harm patients who already have difficulty accessing an abortion, including people with few financial resources, people of color, LGBTQ individuals and young people.”

Some 49% of women who get abortions in the U.S. have incomes below the federal poverty level, and 75% are low income. A majority already have children, and a majority are nonwhite.


Almost 22 million women of reproductive age (15–49) who live in states without abortion access – and transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals who also may become pregnant – must either travel to another state to access abortion care or self-manage their abortion.


Altogether, almost one-third (29%) of the total US population of women of reproductive age are living in states where abortion is either unavailable or severely restricted.


In the 100 days after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, 66 clinics had stopped providing abortion care, and nearly one-third had closed entirely, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

In 2022, The Chicago Abortion Fund provided support for over 7,000 people facing barriers to their abortion care – more than twice as many as the year before. As a result of greater travel distances and delays in obtaining care, average spending per patient has increased about 14% over the previous year, according to a New York Times report of Sept. 28, 2022.

“We’re expecting tens of thousands more people to come to Illinois,” said Alicia Hurtado, communications and advocacy manager at the Chicago Abortion Fund.


CAF’s budget for patients jumped from $16,000 a week in the first three months of 2022 to around $25,000 after a draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked in May.


“And now, post-Dobbs, our weekly budget [for financial and logistical support] is between $35,000 and $45,000 each week,” Hurtado said. “It’s a really massive increase in scale and not just because of more people calling, but having many more cases requiring that deep case management, full-scale support, paying for people to travel longer distances.”

A January 2021 report issued by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy found that foundation support for abortion funds occupies only a small fraction—just 3 percent—of the overall philanthropic commitment to reproductive rights initiatives nationwide. In 2020, the National Network of Abortion Funds reported that it was able to serve just 44,000 of 230,000 requests for help.


Donating to The Chicago Abortion Fund is the most important thing that we can do for reproductive justice at this time.


“Central to the defense of reproductive rights for all must be the provision of and commitment to direct aid to the communities facing those attacks head-on.” [Brennan Center for Justice]

The Chicago Abortion Fund
https://www.chicagoabortionfund.org/