Reading the news these days is more depressing than usual in Richmond, Virginia. Headlines even in our notoriously conservative local paper tell a tale of struggle for the working class and poor. The foreclosure rate was up 805 percent in the second quarter of 2008 as compared to 2007, and the rate of unemployment is the highest it's been in years, according to the Virginia Poverty Center. As an advocate for the women of Richmond, I see these numbers in terms of women's lives: how are women who struggle coming up with the money for the day to day necessities so many of us take for granted, like food or shelter? Are they making it at all?

I know the answer to these questions and more, because I am a part of the Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project, Virginia's only active abortion fund. We serve the women in Virginia who are already financially precarious and can't possibly afford the luxury of the freedom of choice. For five years we have aided women in paying for abortions, and while we do not widely advertise, for the most part we have been able to keep up with the calls we receive for help. However, as the economy has bottomed out, this all changed. In September we started hearing from women in need daily, up to three times per day. And since September, we have been steadily increasing the number of people we fund. Last fiscal year, we funded 19 women; in the past four months alone, we have funded 24 women. Needless to say our Board of Directors is concerned; what will we do when the money runs out? How can we predict how long the recession will last? How much worse will it get before it gets better?

The women we fund are poor - they lack access to education, good jobs and health care for themselves and their children. Most often they are young, and already mothers. In past months this demographic has not changed; now, there are just so many more women who fit this description.  We are being forced to turn away women who, a few months ago, we would have been able to help simply because there are now more women in worse places then there were before.

Since 1976 the Hyde Amendment has prohibited federal Medicaid money from paying for abortions.  Although 18 states use their own funds to cover abortions in many circumstances, Virginia is one of the 32 states that does not - leaving its poorest women without resources to determine the size and shape of their own families.  In the absence of public funding, abortion funds pick up what slack they can; last year, the abortion funds across the country, including RRFP, raised and disbursed more than $3 million to assist 21,000 women in paying for their abortions.  The National Network of Abortion Funds, an organization composed of 106 grassroots abortion funds in the U.S., Canada, and overseas, is taking on Hyde through the Hyde-30 Years is Enough! Campaign. The 50+ members of the Hyde Campaign are working to repeal the Hyde Amendment and restore dignity to poor women.  

At a time when more and more women will begin to rely on Medicaid for their health care, the Hyde Amendment is an insidious obstacle to full access to reproductive health care. It's clear that the recession is having a disproportionate impact on the women we serve. More than ever, our intake forms are filled with women telling us that they have lost their jobs, had hours cut back, been evicted, or are living on the streets. Just a few short months ago these women would have been able to scrape together the money for an abortion without the aid of my organization, but so much has drastically changed in a few short months. It has always been our protocol to encourage women to pawn and sell their posessions in order to pay for their procedures, to pay their cell phone bills a few weeks late or ask for help from their friends and families. Now, women greet our brainstorms with an almost ironic laughter. What do you sell when you have nothing left? How do you pay a bill late you were never planning on paying anyway because you never had the money? How do you ask your mom or dad to pay for your abortion when they just had their own home foreclosed?

We don't have the answers to these questions, so we just hope that somehow the money will come in. That in one month we won't have to start telling every woman who calls us that we have nothing to give. That perhaps in an Obama administration, it will be made clear that women's access to comprehensive reproductive health is a priority, and that the right to a safe and legal abortion is not reserved for the privileged. Right now, the future isn't looking so bright. We know that women in Virginia will be forced to continue their pregnancies or resort to self-abortion through unsafe methods because the option of a safe, legal abortion is no longer feasible based purely on affordability. Until then we will keep on answering phone calls, listening to the sob stories and holding the hands of Virginia's women through a process that shouldn't have to be so complicated.

If you are interested in donating to the Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project, please send checks to PO Box 7389, Richmond, VA 23221. Or donate with credit or debit cards here. All donations are tax deductible.