Iowa’s Abortion Ban Strikes Another Blow to Access: ‘All Hands on Deck’

Previously, IAAF provided between 50 and 90 patient grants per month for both in-state and out-of-state care. (Iowa has a requirement for two visits, 24 hours apart, and had a prior 22-week ban.) Iowa clinics also cared for patients coming from Missouri, where abortion has been banned since the day of the Dobbs decision. Most of those people will now have to find somewhere else to go. Lenz expects both the number of grants and the amount to increase as the majority of Iowans will now have to travel out of state for care—which means that the IAAF needs to raise even more money to help people make it to their appointments.

Qudsiyyah Shariyf, deputy director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, said it was already seeing an increase in Iowa callers since the state Supreme Court ruled in late June that the ban would be upheld. (Abortion access is protected in Illinois through fetal viability, but that could change if Donald Trump wins the presidency, or if the U.S. Supreme Court declares fetal personhood under the 14th Amendment.) In the first three weeks of July, CAF received more than 60 support requests from Iowans—a 165% increase. 

The strain on funds like IAAF and CAF comes on top of the number of abortion-seekers who are now traveling from the South after Florida’s 6-week ban took effect on May 1. (In 2023, Florida clinics provided 84,000 abortions or about one in 12 nationwide; experts expect the number to fall by more than half.) Abortion funds are also navigating funding cuts from national organizations: As of July 1, both the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood cut patient assistance from 50% of each caller’s need down to just 30%. (That is, if someone requests $1,000, they can now only qualify for $300 compared to $500 before.) 

CAF has 12 people working full-time on their helpline, in addition to dedicated volunteers, but is in the process of hiring more staffers since Illinois has become “a receiving state,” Shariyf said. In 2023, more than 37,000 people traveled to Illinois to get abortions, the biggest number of out-of-state patients in the country—again, that was before Florida’s ban took effect. 

Megan Jeyifo, CAF’s executive director, said July has been a watershed month, with the fund set to grant about $500,000 to abortion seekers—up from their 2023 average of $360,000 monthly. “It is all hands on deck,” Jeyifo told Jezebel. “Qudsiyyah is our deputy director and she is still doing direct service every single day.”

The partnership with IAAF is one of several that CAF has forged since the Dobbs decision. It’s also working with three other funds in the region: Women’s Medical Fund in Wisconsin (WMF), Arkansas Abortion Support Network (AASN), and Nebraska Abortion Resources (NEAR). “As a fund with staff, we’re really trying to leverage that capacity to streamline the support they’re getting,” Shariyf told Jezebel. “Our goal is to make it so that once someone touches base with Chicago Abortion Fund, they have one main point of contact.”

People who want to support abortion seekers from those states should donate directly to the local funds, Jeyifo said. “We want to see all abortion funds in this country be resourced in the way that we are,” she said. “We want to see abortion funds be at the table shaping policy for their state and involved in legislation. The only way that can happen is if people shout about the work of abortion funds from the rooftops. So, yes, give them all the money.”

Lenz added that IAAF has received “lots of lovely help” in the past few weeks in the form of one-time gifts and recurring donations, but she stressed that fighting the ban will be a long-term effort and she worries about a future “when people have forgotten and the reality of the ban is really hitting Iowans hard.” Lenz also noted that giving to smaller funds offers a lot of bang for your buck. “We have literally one employee and very small administration costs.” She said that, as a largely volunteer-run organization, “nearly every single penny of our donations goes straight back out the door to help Iowans.”

And Jeyifo noted that, while people may be excited about the prospect of electoral politics restoring abortion protections at the federal level, people are going to keep needing abortions until then—however far away that is. “We want to see the same investment that organizers and national organizations impacting federal legislation receive in direct service. You have to do these two things side by side. You cannot do them separately,” she said. “It means that you are passing laws on the backs of people who will be forced to remain pregnant when they did not want to. And that is cruel.”