This Funding Campaign Is Helping to Keep Independent Abortion Clinics Open and Safe

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When most Americans think of abortion care, the first and perhaps only names that come immediately to mind are generally large, nationally known organizations. But while those organizations are also vitally important, the fact is that 3 out of 5 abortions in the U.S. are provided by independent healthcare clinics that are mostly unknown outside of their local communities. 

Every organization that supports or provides abortion care is under attack by extremists, but these mostly small, independent clinics, along with their staffs and patients, are particularly vulnerable because they lack the protection of a national organization’s public relations, security, and legal staff. 

The Abortion Care Network (ACN) works to level that playing field. One of its initiatives, the Keep Our Clinics campaign, has provided more than $3 million to independent clinics to help cover costs, including increased security, legal fees, and community education and advocacy. 

Launched in the comparatively halcyon days for abortion access of 2008, with reported net assets of not much over $30,000, Abortion Care Network’s bottom line has steadily increased. The organization first hit six figures in assets in 2015 and, as of 2020, reported $1.9 million. According to ACN Executive Director Nikki Madsen, most of the funding for Keep Our Clinics is being provided by individual donors, many giving between $5 and $50 a month to sustain independent clinics for the long haul. However, institutional funders haven’t been shy about joining the party. Madsen said that Schmidt Futures, Gilead Foundation, Abortion Bridge Collective, Kitchings Family Foundation and Ladybug Foundation became supporters of ACN and the Keep Our Clinics campaign this year.

According to ACN, Keep Our Clinics raised $5 million through the end of November 2022, a tenfold increase from the $584,000 raised through December 2021. At the time of this writing in mid-December 2022, the campaign made up more than 50% of the Abortion Care Network’s annual budget, compared to 20% of its 2021 budget.

“We’ve seen a real comradery of foundations, institutions and individuals giving to the effort to keep clinics open and providing care in their communities,” Madsen said. Every penny of that money makes its way directly to clinics, while Abortion Care Network relies on other sources of funding, including foundation support, for its own operations. 

The front lines of abortion care

Crimes, including violent crimes, against abortion providers surged by up to 600% in 2021. Independent clinics requested more than $1 million from ACN to improve security and keep themselves and their patients as safe as possible. 

“We know this is just a fraction of the need,” Madsen said. “As clinics are forced to close, dangerous, violent protesters affiliated with white supremacist movements converge around the remaining clinics to harass patients and providers.”

Security is only one of the urgent needs that the Keep Our Clinics campaign aims to fill. “In states where abortion is no longer available or is severely limited, we have supported clinics to keep their doors open as they transition their practices to providing broader reproductive health services to their communities, such as miscarriage management, post-abortion care visits, out-of-state abortion care navigation, and to continue serving as plaintiffs in court cases,” Madsen said. “In states seeing an influx of patients from surrounding states, we have supported clinic expansion, including purchasing buildings and equipment and hiring additional staff.” 

The campaign also helps with legal fees — assistance that could become even more critical as extremists push Republican state governments to block websites containing information about accessing care and even to incarcerate people for helping patients avoid laws that stand in the way of their healthcare.

The clinics supported by ACN’s Keep Our Clinics campaign vary in size and scope. Small family practices and nonprofits that provide a wider range of reproductive care beyond abortions are included, as are facilities with just one doctor and a budget of $600,000. Larger centers they support have budgets of more than $4 million. All of them have one thing in common: They are on the front lines of abortion care. 

“Despite the differences in size, the number of patients they see, and the types of care they offer, all the clinics in our membership are under-resourced and fighting battles on multiple fronts,” Madsen said. 

They are also in need. Thanks to what Madsen called an “outpouring of support from individuals and the philanthropic community,” ACN hopes to provide $5 million by the end of this calendar year — to make at least a substantial dent in the $8 million in requests the funder has received from clinics. 

Even before the fall of Roe, funding the fight against extremist attacks on abortion access could frequently feel like a game of Whack-A-Mole as written by Stephen King. These days, threats to abortion access are multiplying even more rapidlyas are the requests for monetary support from the many organizations working to counter those threats. Funders with a desire to counter these horrors might do well to consider moving money to the front-line clinics that are working frantically to keep abortion as safe and accessible as possible.