Everyone Loves Someone Who Has Had an Abortion

Ariana King, WMF Communications Intern

Edited by Lucy Marshall & Katrina Morrison

Everyone loves someone who has had an abortion, whether they know it or not. Statistically speaking, one in four cisgender women has had an abortion by the time she’s 45. When you add in the number of abortions trans or non-binary people have had, the possibility you know someone who’s had an abortion only goes up.

Yet despite the high prevalence of abortion amongst the people we love, access to it is heavily limited by unnecessary national and state restrictions. In the state of Wisconsin, these restrictions include but are not limited to: mandatory state counseling to dissuade the person from getting an abortion, a 24 waiting period (which means two trips to the abortion facility), the prohibition of telemedicine to provide abortions, and the ban on abortions past 20+ weeks postfertilization. Access to public funds is also nearly impossible.

This is where Women’s Medical Fund Wisconsin (WMF) comes into play. We’re a volunteer-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to helping Wisconsinites fund their abortions. We are here to fill in the gaps to healthcare access to protect each person’s right to autonomy over their own bodies.

WMF invites you to help fund abortions by participating in this year’s Bowl-a-Thon— our biggest grassroots fundraising movement of the year. In coordination with the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF), member organizations like WMF all across the country call on abortion access advocates to mobilize their friends, family, neighbors and colleagues to join our work to fund abortion and build power.

While we may often hesitate to talk about abortion due to the strong barriers and opposition, the Bowl-a-Thon provides us with an opportunity to have heart-to-heart conversations about abortion care. These discussions serve as supportive platforms from which we can initiate social change through reflective, value-sharing, community-based conversations. They help us discover what we have in common regarding abortion in order to destigmatize the issue and include more folks in the conversation.

As we lead these dialogues, we must remember to ground them in other systems of oppression that limit abortion access. At WMF, we honor that intersectionality is a key part of the reproductive justice framework and understand how a person’s multiple identities (race, class, sexuality, gender, ability/disability etc.) can make access to abortion even more challenging. For example, many of WMF’s callers face homelessness or housing instability; some work but are unable to afford the full cost of an abortion. This is just one of the many ways that economic insecurity, and housing injustice and issues like the minimum wage significantly impact abortion access.

Through this framework, it becomes clear that abortion access is not only about removing legal restrictions, though that is important too. There are several disadvantages marginalized communities face that influence their reproductive choices such as poverty, social stigma, and the inability to raise their child with dignity. This means that along with advocating for legal abortion rights, we must also advocate for better safety nets. In doing so, more people will be able to make the best possible choice for their families.

Statistically, the rate of abortion falls most heavily on cisgender women of color and low-income cisgender women. (Data is not available for trans or non-binary folks). According to Guttmacher Institute, poor cisgender women make up 75% of cisgender women who sought abortions (with 49% being below the federal poverty line). Black cisgender women have 27.1 abortions per 1,000 compared to 10 abortions per 1,000 for white cisgender women.

Not only do black and low-income cisgender women have more abortions than other demographic groups, but the history of racism, discrimination, and inaccesss to healthcare and other financial aid delays access and increases its costs— from a mean of $508 for a ten week aspiration abortion to between $500- $3,000 for a D&E later first-term to second-term abortion. The financial barrier is only exacerbated by external factors, one of those being anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers, or fake abortion clinics.

Described vaguely to Alana— a storyteller at Shout Your Abortion— as a clinic to help her discuss pregnancy “options”, it soon became clear that they wanted her to do anything but get an abortion. They flooded her with pro-adoption magazines with pictures of perspective families and sent her home with an ultrasound and newborn clothing. While Alana was able to get an abortion at Planned Parenthood at 11 weeks pregnant, crisis pregnancy centers continue to prey on low-income people and communities of color, strategically choosing the location of their ads, billboards, and facilities to stop and delay as many abortions as possible.

At the end of the day, abortion rights are a part of our collective liberation. WMF and its community of activists and callers have taken brave steps to make this a reality for each and every individual- no matter their identities or background. We invite you to continue making the political and cultural change we need not only through fundraising but by advocating for social justice on a larger scale. All the work you do to fight the many systems of oppression will always circle back to abortion access.