Florida abortion funds have faced a surge in requests for help since May, but their job is about to get even harder

More than 6 million Florida voters this election cycle voted in favor of enshrining the right to abortion up to the point of fetal viability in the state constitution. It still wasn’t enough.

That proposed constitutional amendment, on the ballot as Amendment 4, got 57% of the vote in Tuesday’s general election — a clear majority. But it did not surpass the 60% threshold that Florida requires for the passage of constitutional amendments. Currently, Florida law bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and now, post-election, that’s not expected to change any time soon, despite calls from some Democrats to repeal.

“The Florida Legislature and Governor Ron DeSantis — who spent public money to campaign against Amendment 4 — should take these results as a clear rejection of their extremism and as a direct call to repeal Florida’s six-week abortion ban,” wrote Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, in a statement regarding the majority vote she posted to social media Tuesday.

Organizations in Florida that help pregnant people access abortion care, like the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, expect their jobs will get harder, with an even greater surge in requests for help, moving forward.

“If we would have gotten viability back, we still would have been helping a lot of Floridians and a lot of people coming into Florida,” said Bree Wallace, director of case management for TBAF. “So you know, now we’re just kind of doing the opposite. Still helping Floridians here, but also having to help them go out of state.”

Before Florida’s six-week abortion ban, there was a 15-week ban enacted during the summer of 2022, approved by the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion.

Before the 15-week ban, abortion in Florida was legal up to viability — about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Florida at that point had a much less restrictive landscape for abortion access compared to other states in the U.S. South.

Now, it boasts one of the strictest bans in the country. The closest state to legally access abortion past 12 weeks of pregnancy is Virginia, more than 700 miles away.

Wallace’s group, the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, has seen the number of requests they’ve received for accessing out-of-state care triple since May 1, when Florida’s six-week ban took effect. Her organization specifically serves residents of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, where voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of Amendment 4.

“Nobody should have to travel out of state for healthcare,” Wallace argued. And for some people who contact her, it’s their first time traveling out of Florida.

So, she’s tasked with explaining the logistics of travel. She researches the most accessible and affordable lodging for callers, and develops relationships with abortion clinics in places like Washington, D.C., and Illinois to help get them appointments. Virginia, the closest state with less restrictive rules on access, isn’t an easy place to find affordable hotels or flights, said Wallace.

“I know a lot of people are trying to go to Virginia, but unless you’re driving, flights and hotels aren’t always the easiest,” she said. “They kind of get expensive at times, too.”

Her group has pledged roughly $345,000 just since May 1 to cover appointment costs for 739 people seeking abortion care. They’ve also pledged more than $55,000 in practical support, for things like airfare and hotels, averaging $800 for each person who requests it.

Unlike some other abortion funds in the U.S., TBAF doesn’t have restrictions on who they help, based on income or anything like that, as long as they live in Hillsborough or Pinellas County. They don’t require people to share sob stories in order to justify providing financial assistance for those in a vulnerable position — people who have no else to talk to, nowhere else to turn. But people often share their circumstances anyway.

“I’ll have people tell me they are unhoused, they’re going from couch to couch, they don’t have a job, they don’t know what to do,” said Wallace. “Which is, you know, incredibly hard to hear.”

Abortion care in Tampa, for instance, costs about $700 for the procedure itself, or $800 for medication abortion, according to Wallace. And that’s just if you’re less than six weeks pregnant and able to access that care legally. Beyond that point in pregnancy, there are travel costs to consider as well.

Wallace, who’s responsible for fielding requests for help, recalled one person who contacted her last week who was looking for help affording an abortion procedure in Florida. This person was eight weeks pregnant, and wasn’t aware of the state’s six-week limit.

“That was rough,” Wallace admitted. “You sometimes have to be the person telling them, like, ‘Hey, you’re not able to get an abortion in Florida.’”

An August survey released by KFF found that nearly 30 percent of women of reproductive age in Florida said they weren’t sure about the status of abortion restrictions in their state.

The Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, founded in 2017, is a grassroots, entirely volunteer-driven nonprofit with the exception of Wallace, who handles all of the case management. They’ve helped over 1,500 callers since Jan. 1 of this year, alone, pledging over $630,000 in appointment costs, plus $80,000 in practical support.

Since last year, the average cost of helping pregnant people in desperate situations, however, has only gone up. In 2023, TBAF pledged an average of $340 for appointment costs. Today, they say the average is $430.

The National Abortion Federation, a professional association of abortion providers, helps cover the cost of abortion for patients at their affiliated clinics. But due to fewer donations, the group was forced this past July to cut its monthly budget for cost assistance in half — reducing the amount of financial assistance available to help cover the cost of care for those who may be unable to afford an abortion otherwise.

As NPR reports, Florida Medicaid doesn’t cover abortion care, and state law prohibits insurance plans sold on the Affordable Care Act marketplace from providing coverage.

While the state gives millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers, often run by church groups or religious nonprofits, Florida law forbids providing state or local government funds — money used to provide medical services like cancer screenings, HIV testing or pregnancy planning — to any institution that also provides abortion.

Stephanie Loraine Piñeiro, executive director of the statewide Florida Access Network, which also offers financial assistance for abortion procedures, admitted she expects some Florida abortion clinics will likely be forced to close, in the aftermath of Amendment 4’s failure to pass.

“Unfortunately, I do think that’s going to happen,” Piñeiro told Orlando Weekly. “A lot of independent abortion clinics have been holding their breath, waiting on the results of this election, to see if they can continue to operate.” 

Florida currently has about 50 licensed abortion clinics across the state. Many are affiliated with Planned Parenthood, but others — like the Center of Orlando for Women, one of just two abortion clinics in Orlando — are private. Orlando’s clinic even set up a GoFundMe after the six-week ban went into effect, sharing the clinic was “at risk of forced closure due to the ban.”

“We want to thank everyone who has donated and helped us keep our doors open to help these women in their time of need,” wrote GoFundMe organizer and clinic owner Denise Williams, in an Oct. 8 update. “Vote Yes on Amendment 4 Florida 2024.”

Planned Parenthood, which represents less than one-third of licensed abortion clinics in the state, navigated more than 300 pregnant people out-of-state after the six-week ban took effect, according to a news release. They were one of the key organizations involved in the political committee backing Amendment 4, and thew millions of dollars behind the campaign to help secure its passage.

Wallace, sharing her immediate reaction to Tuesday’s election with Orlando Weekly, said news of Amendment 4’s failure to pass was “obviously heartbreaking.” Many abortion rights advocates, she said, “had high hopes it would pass.”

“A lot of independent abortion clinics have been holding their breath, waiting on the results of this election, to see if they can continue to operate.”

Polling for the measure slipped in the months leading up to the election, as DeSantis directed state agencies to paint Amendment 4 backers as fraudsters and liars, and threatened TV stations with criminal penalties for airing pro-Amendment 4 ads.

“I think we all got a good cry out of it, and now we’re pretty much just back to the work we’ve been doing,” said Wallace, in a phone call Thursday. “I mean, we know we can’t just stop because something like that happened.”

Piñeiro, who studied social work at the University of Central Florida, similarly described the news as devastating. “The work is absolutely going to get more challenging,” she said. The Florida Access Network has helped 1,059 pregnant Floridians cover abortion-related costs since April, said Piñeiro. But both she and Wallace admit that fundraising has been one of their biggest challenges.

They’ve seen a surge in requests for help — even among people who are less than six weeks pregnant, who can still legally access abortion through a Florida clinic — but find the depletion of their funds to be a significant barrier in helping pregnant people in perhaps their greatest time of need. Other abortion funds in the U.S. have similarly reported a drop-off in what they dubbed “rage donations” after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022.

In states like Texas and Georgia, with similarly restrictive bans, women have died due to pregnancy complications, because doctors were fearful of whether they could legally provide medically necessary care if it meant terminating a pregnancy.

Women in Florida have similarly shared stories of struggling to access care to terminate even wanted pregnancies, where there were complications that made those pregnancies non-viable.

“I’m not bringing a child into this world just for them to experience pain and to suffer,” said Danielle Tallafus, who made the incredibly difficult decision with her husband in 2020 to terminate her pregnancy, after hearing from a doctor at 20 weeks that the left side of her baby’s heart would never fully develop.

She spent hours with doctors, and hours online researching her baby’s diagnosed condition, searching for any answer that would allow her to deliver the son she wanted. She was told her baby would need three open-heart surgeries within the first two years of his life, with the first to take place within the first few days of birth. There was no guarantee the newborn wouldn’t feel excruciating pain from the procedure.

“Just imagining putting that burden onto such a tiny body was unimaginable,” Tallafus said, speaking at a recent roundtable of doctors and abortion rights advocates in support of Amendment 4 in Winter Park.

In 2020, abortion was still legal up to about 24 weeks in Florida. Tallafus was, by luck, able to make an appointment at a clinic hours away, in West Palm Beach, before she passed the 24-week cutoff. She said she had to pay $5,000 for the procedure out of pocket.

“I have to remind people in my community constantly that when you start saying that abortions need to be banned, and you’re happy for this 15 weeks [limit], and then the subsequent six weeks, you’re saying that to people like me. People who wanted their child. I had his name picked out,” she said, blinking back tears. “His name was Nathaniel.”

Wallace said she wanted Orlando Weekly readers to know that her organization is here for its community, and it’s not going anywhere. “We don’t have Planned Parenthood money, but we’re all still doing on the ground work, and we just really want to make sure people know that we exist and that you know, we’re a resource that they can use.”

The Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, made up of roughly 50 volunteers, accepts direct donations, has an online shop for TBAF merch, and welcomes community members to hold fundraisers for them (like an upcoming live music benefit show at Deviant Libation in Tampa on Nov. 30).

Florida Access Network also accepts direct donations. In addition to serving as an abortion fund, they also offer peer support, mutual aid services, and community-building events to destigmatize abortion and create spaces for conversation.

Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | or sign up for our RSS Feed

This article appears in Nov 6-12, 2024.