This story by Lindsey Toomer appeared on Colorado Newsline on August 23, 2024.
As abortion funds around the country make changes to their operations and funding models to meet the ever-growing need for patient support, Colorado’s abortion funds are stretched thin.
The Cobalt Abortion Fund said last week that it implemented a monthly spending cap starting in July as the need for financial assistance to access abortion care continues to grow.
An affiliate of Cobalt Advocates, a Colorado-based nonprofit that advances reproductive rights, the fund provides direct financial assistance for people seeking abortion care. In addition to helping patients cover the costs of procedures, Cobalt’s Abortion Fund assists with travel and lodging expenses, including for an increasing number of people traveling to Colorado from states that have limited or banned access to abortion after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson.
Karen Middleton, president of Cobalt, said the fund’s board originally committed to meeting “every request we’ve received without limits” in fall 2021. In 2023, the abortion fund spent $1.25 million, and in the first quarter of 2024, it spent $502,591. Cobalt predicted the fund was on track to spend $2.5 million by the end of this year.
“We just can’t maintain that high level of spending without having an upper limit,” Middleton said. “We hit a point where we just didn’t think we could raise that much more money, particularly in an election year, particularly with a whole organization to maintain.”
Middleton said 100% of the money people donate to procedure and practical support funds go to patients, not towards the organization’s administrative costs. The Cobalt Abortion Fund was initially founded in 1984 to help make up for “shortfalls” in Colorado when the state banned the use of public funding for access to abortion care, Middleton said.
“This abortion fund was designed to help tide people over. It was not designed to compensate for half the states banning abortion after (former President Donald) Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe,” Middleton said in reference to the Dobbs decision. “This care and help was needed before these draconian policies ever went into effect, and the structure was not designed to go beyond that.”
Two other Colorado-based organizations say they are seeing the same trend, as abortion fund directors nationwide raise the alarm about declining donation revenue.
“Up until now, national organizations, their function when it comes to abortion funding has been to shoulder a lot of the burden for procedure funding,” said Holly Ballard, development director for the Colorado Doula Project, a volunteer organization that provides support to people seeking abortion care.
“Now, when the funding cuts have happened, we’re looking at something like 30% funding of a procedure instead of 80%,” Ballard added. “All of a sudden, those numbers are astronomically higher for that client, and they’re coming to us needing help and we are not able to help them to the degree that they need.”
Ballard said while her organization served about 100 people in 2021, it’s on track to serve about 1,200 by the end of 2024. But the project’s funding, which comes only from individual donations, has also faltered since the initial spike in donations abortion funds saw immediately after the Dobbs decision.
“When we talk to our partner funds across the country, we’re hearing the same thing that we’re seeing, which is that individual donations are declining,” Ballard said. “We’ve really been able to get creative with how we help folks and the resources that we’re able to help them access, and have done that with basically a pretty static budget. As the client numbers have gone up, the budget has stayed relatively the same.”
Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains is feeling the pressure too, as more patients need help and abortion care and practical support funds have less to work with. Since the Dobbs decision, PPRM has provided more than $12.5 million in patient assistance funding. Prior to Dobbs, the organization spent about $1.4 million a year.
“As a trusted nonprofit health care provider, we remain committed to removing financial barriers for our patients so they can access the quality reproductive health care they need, but that is becoming more difficult without the increased financial resources to match our growing patient volume and need,” Sarah Taylor-Nanista, chief external affairs officer at PPRM, said in a statement.
Ballard and Middleton both said Colorado has seen a high influx of patients seeking abortion later into pregnancy.
“Because we are a state that does not have gestational limits, we’re able to provide later abortion care,” Middleton said. “That kind of care is more expensive, and the need has become more acute because people are pushed later into pregnancy (from) other states needing to travel here.”
In an attempt to better meet the increased demand, Cobalt has staggered its funding calendar to to start on the 15th of each month, Middleton said, aiming to ensure that they don’t exhaust their monthly budget at the same time as other funds.
Ballard said the Doula Project’s intake team will assess what a patient’s needs are and determine resources available to them or if there are more affordable options. She said how they can help people also comes down to where the organization’s budget is that month.
Middleton said Cobalt hasn’t had any “hard turnaways” yet, as the organization has tried to help each person it interacts with however it can. While the Doula Project also has yet to turn anyone away outright, Ballard said if support doesn’t increase to meet the need, “there’s going to be a time where we’re not going to be able to help everyone.”
Despite the national landscape working against them, Middleton and Ballard said their teams show up every day with a positive attitude and intentions to help people.
“I think we are all in really good spirits, all things considered, and really optimistic about the willingness of people to step up and help when that time is needed, and that time is now,” Ballard said. “I think we all believe that people will show up for us. The community that we have become a part of and cultivated has, time and again, shown up in ways that we could have imagined and we fully believe and expect that they’ll continue to do that.”
Cobalt is also part of a coalition raising money for a reproductive rights ballot measure this year, so Middleton said she hopes many of the people donating to support the measure this year will come back to support the abortion fund next year. Initiative 89 would solidify the right to access abortion in Colorado’s constitution and allow the procedure to be covered by health insurance plans for state and local government employees, repealing a 40-year old constitutional ban that prohibits state dollars from being used to pay for abortions.
“In my mind, if we can really double down on raising the money we need this year, we can then turn to some of those supporters and say, we’ve secured the constitutional right to access abortion. Now, will you join us in helping to really grow this fund, to continue to meet every need.”