"A person with the resources will always be able to travel to get her abortion," says Nan Kirkpatrick, Executive Director of Texas Equal Access Fund. Others often rely on Kirkpatrick's organization to cover the costs. The TEA Fund, and providers like it, including Lilith Fund and West Fund, work to bridge the abortion access gap by providing low income women with a portion of the funds necessary to access the procedure in Texas. Serving North Texas, West Texas, and the Panhandle, and Central, South, East, and West Texas respectively, TEA Fund and Lilith Fund provide grants between $50 to $300 to a fraction of the more than 5,000 women who call one of the two hotlines each year.Together, these organizations create a type of underground abortion railroad for women facing life altering events if they can't come up with the money for a standard, safe medical procedure.
Demand for the funds' help is huge with Lilith Fund fielding an average of 20 to 35 calls per shift and the TEA Fund recently receiving up to 35 calls per shift. At the beginning of each shift, volunteers sift through voicemails left by clients, returning calls and running through a series of intake questions—How far along are you? Where will your procedure take place? How much will it cost? Are you employed? Where else are you getting funding?—to determine how much to fund.When TEA Fund was founded 64 abortions providers existed throughout the state. After years of legislative roll backs on abortion rights, there remains only 18.
While organizations like TEA and Lilith Funds take care of the procedure, organizations like Fund Texas Choice take care of the travel. Practically all the clients who utilize Fund Texas Choice also use abortion fund providers like TEA and Lilith Funds, according to St. Clair.Fund Texas Choice was founded in 2013 in response to the passing of House Bill 2, when it became apparent that only a handful of clinics would survive to serve all of Texas. Unlike TEA and Lilith Funds, Fund Texas Choice works on a monthly budget, with every client receiving funding so long as they meet that month's requirements.The necessity to secure both travel funds and procedure funds makes access an elusive, moving puzzle made up of ever changing pieces for women who are often piece-mealing funding from two or more providers on the side of coordinating travel plans.
Half of Fund Texas Choice's clients make the trip to New Mexico where, unlike Texas, abortion is legal past 20 weeks and where at least one clinic in Albuquerque will go up to 28 weeks. New Mexico is also just closer to the isolated towns and cities of Texas' western border—close enough that Texas lawyers even argued its proximity to El Paso proved HB2 "does not impose a substantial obstacle in the path of abortion patients."The logistical minefield of managing 20 different cases each month, plus the added irritant of planning travel — "Nobody likes booking plane tickets, let's be real," St. Clair says — is a small window into the stressors that Texas women must navigate on their own, often on top of working part- or full-time jobs and managing families. It's draining, but St. Clair sees all the funds' work as an absolute necessity.The majority of women who call Lilith and TEA Funds will not receive any funds. For every one woman it helps, Lilith Fund is unable to fund two more.