Our Shared Offering for the month of March is Midwest Access Coalition (MAC). MAC is a nonprofit abortion fund that helps people access safe abortion by assisting with travel coordination and costs, lodging, food, medicine, childcare, procedure payment gaps, and providing emotional support. MAC also provides free emergency contraception.
The people most affected by abortion restrictions are those already facing overlapping systems of oppression. Of all abortion patients in the U.S., 75% have low income, the majority are nonwhite, and the majority are already parents. Abortion restrictions disproportionately impact those who face financial and logistic barriers, including young people, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, people with low incomes and those in rural areas, as well as Black, Indigenous and other people of color.
The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries, with dramatic racial inequities. Black and Indigenous women’s maternal mortality rates are 2 to 3 times the rate for White women. Reports of abuse involving reproductive coercion — actions that prevent someone from making crucial decisions about their body and reproductive health — nearly doubled in the yearlong period after Roe v. Wade was overturned, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Compared with women who get the abortion they seek, women who do not obtain a wanted abortion have three times greater odds of being unemployed and four times greater odds of subsequently living in poverty.
The number of out-of-state abortion patients coming to Illinois for care has increased to between 40,000 and 50,000 per year. The average travel costs per person are $1,200. Midwest Access Coalition works to alleviate injustices and threats to health by providing one-on-one support and direct aid to disadvantaged patients. MAC has helped over 3,000 people from 30 states, coming mostly to Illinois for
care, including our two Champaign clinics – Planned Parenthood and Equity Clinic.
The MAC website: https://www.midwestaccesscoalition.org/