General Discussion

WhiskeyGrinder

(23,934 posts) Sun Dec 1, 2024, 05:18 PM Sunday

The Asymetry in the Abortion Rights Movement

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-asymmetry-in-the-abortion-rights-movement

The question of inequity between the high-altitude advocacy and direct-services wings of the reproductive-rights movement is one “that the larger repro orgs and the smallest grassroots orgs are all asking and trying to figure out together,” Olivia Cappello, Planned Parenthood’s associate director for state advocacy communications, told me. “It is really tough to know that electoral campaigns cost so much money, and that we have to pour so much money to win back rights, little by little, when we also see such a tremendous direct patient need.” Cappello also served for many years as a case manager for the D.C. Abortion Fund. From that perspective, she said, “it is really frustrating to see the resources that the Federation has.”

Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of reproductive health care in the country, with about six hundred clinics in all fifty states. Each clinic is run by one of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s forty-nine local affiliates, and each affiliate is its own discrete nonprofit. In its 2022-23 annual report, P.P.F.A. and its affiliates—as distinguished from its advocacy arm, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and its super pac, Planned Parenthood Votes—logged an annual revenue of more than two billion dollars, of which nearly one billion came from private donations. The organization’s Justice Fund covers procedures for very low-income patients; its Emergency Access Fund provides practical support—flights, hotels, Lyft gift cards—for patients who have to travel more than sixty miles one way for an appointment, and usually caps out at five hundred dollars.

When Planned Parenthood and its affiliates make adjustments to their subsidies and prices, advocates who provide direct services can be caught off guard. Kim Floren is the director and co-founder of the abortion fund Justice Through Empowerment Network, based in South Dakota, a state where voters rejected an abortion-rights ballot initiative on Election Day. She also worked for Planned Parenthood North Central States until October, and she told me that, for about a year following the fall of Roe, the affiliate was using tens of thousands of dollars per month from the Emergency Access Fund. But then, Floren said, “The Dobbs money ran out, and they told us that our budget was going to be around six thousand dollars for the next three months.” Destini Spaeth, who heads the Prairie Abortion Fund, which serves Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, told me that, recently, one of the Planned Parenthood clinics she works with roughly doubled its list prices for medication-abortion services. “Why are they charging fifteen hundred dollars when somebody can get that for five or seven hundred dollars at an indie clinic, or for a hundred and fifty dollars online?” Spaeth asked. “I was gobsmacked.”

Ruth Richardson, the president and C.E.O. of the Planned Parenthood North Central States affiliate, said that the higher prices Spaeth quoted do not necessarily reflect what patients ultimately pay, but Richardson did not offer alternate numbers. She also said, in an e-mail, “Pitting the finances of abortion funds and Planned Parenthood against each other is not going to help us secure access in the upcoming administration. It’s going to take sexual and reproductive health care supporters stepping up to support every aspect of the abortion care ecosystem to see us through this moment.”