Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade one year ago, a little-known national network of volunteer groups has faced unprecedented demand from people needing help paying for abortions, with requests pouring in not just from states that have banned or limited the procedure, but also from Massachusetts.
And activists say higher inflation that has made health care, transportation, and other related costs more expensive is adding to the challenge of meeting the surging need.
The Jane Fund of Central Massachusetts pledged nearly $67,000 in the first three months of this year to help strangers hundreds of miles away obtain abortions — an amount that far outstrips what the group offered for an entire year not long ago.
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A director from a similar group, the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts, said it has distributed more money so far this year than in all of 2019.
These small but determined armies of volunteers, known as abortion funds and operating across the country, typically offer financial aid to people in their own region. The need has soared as many patients face multiple hurdles and expenses, often traveling long distances to end a pregnancy because their state severely restricted access after last June’s Dobbs decision, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.
“There will be e-mail threads with 10 regional abortion funds from all along the East Coast, or the country, all chipping in to get one person the funds they need, which is both dispiriting and beautiful,” said Liz Goodfellow,) copresident of the board of the Jane Fund of Central Massachusetts.
The fund said it is currently pledging $5,000 a week to support people in other states who are heading to havens such as Maryland and New York for abortion care.
At the same time, the Massachusetts abortion fund groups are also increasing support for people close to home, as the price of just about everything has skyrocketed.
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“It’s easy to see large numbers [of donations] and think this crisis is covered,” Goodfellow said. “[But] it’s so not true.”
While abortion is legal in Massachusetts, it can be extremely difficult for some to cover rising ancillary costs, say abortion fund leaders. Some people struggle to afford their insurance copay or deductible, or transportation costs; clinics, for safety reasons, instruct patients to get a ride home. And patients might need child care during and after the procedure.
“Abortion access is a thorny thing even for a state that has abortion access in place,” Goodfellow said.
Consider the impact of such ballooning costs at the Abortion Rights Fund of Western Massachusetts. The all-volunteer group has committed more than $100,000 since January to help with abortions and related costs for callers from Massachusetts and New England who are seeking help. By comparison, the group spent $90,000 for similar requests during the entire year in 2019, the most recent data available, said Cory Ellen Gatrall, a member of the fund’s board of directors.
“Everything has gotten more expensive, so the money folks have to put toward any particular expense is subject to the same pressures,” she said.
State regulators in January required insurance plans to cover the costs of abortions, including co-pays and deductibles, but the rule comes with some exceptions, and abortion fund leaders say sometimes even people who have insurance don’t want to use it because they fear others may find out they received the care. The cost of abortions typically ranges from about $500 to $800, according to the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, the leading provider of abortion care in the state. But the cost of a second trimester abortion can be significantly higher, as much as $1,500 to $2,000.
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The league said its clinics are seeing a small increase in abortions in Massachusetts since the Dobbs decision — with patients traveling from farther away than before — but that increase has not affected wait times for appointments or the cost of care.
One year after the Supreme Court ruling that triggered the cascade of abortion bans, largely in the South and Midwest, outrage and the urgency to push back are still palpable in New England, abortion fund leaders say. That groundswell has translated to more people wanting to help — more than some groups can handle at times.
“That’s one of our goals, to figure out how we can harness all this wonderful activism,” said Josephine LaBua, a board member at the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund. “There are so many skills and talents, and we don’t have the capacity yet [to handle them], but we are building.”
Some 13 states have a near total ban on abortions, and 15 have enacted rules that hamper access to receiving a medication abortion, a pregnancy termination process that involves taking two different drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, that can be safely used up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
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In Massachusetts, roughly half of all abortions in 2021 were performed using medications, according to state data. Nationally, the figure is slightly higher.
Among those on the front lines striving to ease access to abortions, notably through medications, is a nonprofit cocreated by Nathaniel Brooks Horwitz, a Massachusetts entrepreneur with a penchant for health-oriented companies.
When news first leaked in early May 2022, that the Supreme Court appeared poised to end constitutionally protected abortion rights, Horwitz vowed to fight back. Joined by three friends, the 26-year-old entrepreneur created a nonprofit called Mayday.Health with a simple goal: to educate people about abortion pills, which few Americans knew much about at the time. The organization does not sell, handle, or profit from abortion pills, Horwitz said. It does provide detailed information about the pills and how to get them.
“Our hope with our campaign is that more people know that abortion pills are available, but many people don’t find out until it’s too late,” Horwitz said.
When the Supreme Court publicly issued its Dobbs decision last June 24, the site went live and, within hours, Horwitz said, reached millions of people.
“We wrote the website at a fifth-grade reading level and ensured the website would not track individual data,” he said.
The company estimates it has reached 50 million people nationwide since last June, across social media, its website, digital ads, billboards, flyers, and radio and TV ads.
Horwitz has since stepped back from daily operations, but continues as a volunteer.
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And though Mayday is now a national organization that receives donations from across the country, Horwitz doesn’t forget its strong Massachusetts roots; roughly two-thirds of the $3 million the company raised in the six months following the Dobbs decision came from donors in Massachusetts, he said.
“That’s a testament to the progressive and health-oriented spirit of the state,” he said.
The Jane Fund recently sent a letter to supporters noting that even though people in Massachusetts are quite sheltered from abortion bans, “that privilege comes with responsibility.”
LaBua, from the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund, puts it this way: “Outside of Massachusetts, there is a lot of frenzy about [abortion] stigma and laws and access. Our job in Massachusetts is getting the message out that we are here, we know what we are doing, and being a sort of calm voice, saying we are going to help you.”
Kay Lazar can be reached at kay.lazar@globe.com Follow her on Twitter @GlobeKayLazar.