Money to help women access abortions is tight in Colorado due to national financial strains

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For the first time in its 40-year history, Colorado’s largest abortion fund is set to limit the amount of money it can provide each month to help women access abortions as national funding is stretched by women traveling away from their homes to receive care.

The Cobalt Abortion Fund’s account that gives money to women for hotels, gas, airplane tickets and child care when they travel to the Colorado for an abortion will be tapped out Thursday, said Melisa Hidalgo-Cuellar, the Cobalt Abortion Fund director. It is the first time the fund has depleted its monthly budget since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that gave federal protection to women’s rights to have an abortion.

The Cobalt Abortion Fund budgets $500,000 a quarter to pay for those expenses, but it is going through money faster amid a spike in client volume over the past six months and funding cuts from the National Abortion Federation, which runs a national abortion hotline and provides financial assistance to people seeking abortions.

Although the fund will be replenished on Friday when a new budget cycle begins, Hidalgo-Cuellar said the situation is a warning sign that money will remain tight for abortion aid as more states enact bans or harsh restrictions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that allowed states to write their own abortion laws.

“It’s really a crisis for abortion seekers,” Hidalgo-Cuellar said.

As more women are forced to travel out of state the cost for them to have an abortion rises.

Women who once did not ask for financial assistance because they did not need to leave their hometowns to have an abortion now find themselves in need of hundreds of extra dollars to not only pay for the service but to afford out-of-state travel. That has resulted in more women needing financial help and the amount of help they need is greater, said Brittany Fonteno, president and chief executive officer of the National Abortion Federation.

“The reality is that since Roe was overturned two years ago, there has been a slew of cruel state-level bans and restrictions that have followed, driving a substantial increase in both the number of patients who need financial assistance and in the amount of assistance they need from our National Abortion Hotline,” Fonteno said in a statement emailed to The Denver Post. “And although people generously gave in record amounts immediately following the overturning of Roe, the donations have slowed even as the need has skyrocketed.”

While Fonteno did not address how the rising financial needs impacted the National Abortion Federation’s capacity to help women, Cobalt’s Hidalgo-Cuellar said the national federation has started limiting how much it can distribute. And that’s forced more women this summer to turn to Cobalt for help.

Cobalt’s distributions to women already have risen fivefold since the Dobbs decision.

In 2021, the year before the Supreme Court reversed a decades-long position that women had a right to an abortion, Cobalt spent $206,000 to help patients access the procedure. In 2023, that amount rose to $1.3 million, according to financial data provided by the organization.

In the first six months of 2024, Cobalt has provided more than $1 million to help women. Of that amount, $612,381 was distributed to 780 women who needed help with expenses outside of the actual abortion procedure, Cobalt’s data show. Almost 92% of those women traveled to Colorado from Texas, which banned abortions with limited exceptions, to seek medical care.

Sarah Taylor-Nanista, chief of external affairs at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said her agency was facing a similar crunch. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, the organization has cared for 12,500 out-of-state patients, she said.

“Rising costs, low reimbursement rates and an increased patient need for subsidized care are hurting health care providers across the country, and Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains is no exception,” she said. “The Dobbs decision only exacerbated these issues by putting into motion a nationwide crisis that continues to strain every corner of the reproductive health care ecosystem.”

All three organizations said donations skyrocketed in the first months after Roe was overturned, but giving has tapered even as patient needs have increased.

Hidalgo-Cuellar called the financial strain a health care crisis.

While some women seek an abortion because they do not want a child, others choose to end a pregnancy for medical reasons such as an ectopic pregnancy in which a fetus grows outside of the uterus.

Part of the problem with rising costs is that women who do not have enough money to travel are postponing appointments as they save funds, which means they are further into their pregnancies and abortions become more complicated medical procedures, Hidalgo-Cuellar said.

Cobalt’s budget to help women afford the expenses associated with abortions runs from the 16th of each month to the 15th of the next month so its latest budget cycle ran from July 16 to Thursday. Hidalgo-Cuellar said that money likely would be gone on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning and it would not be able to help women with travel expenses until Friday.

Cobalt Abortion Fund also is being stretched when it comes to paying for abortion procedures, Hidalgo-Cuellar said. It spent almost $90,000 in July to pay for abortions at clinics in Colorado. That’s $15,000 more than what it usually spends in an average month, and that’s because women are receiving less financial aid from the national federation.

Still, Cobalt does not anticipate turning away women seeking an abortion. Hidalgo-Cuellar called on the National Abortion Federation to release more funds to women who need assistance.

“This is not sustainable,” she said. “We are in a health care crisis and a funding crisis. Now is the time to support abortion seekers.”

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Originally Published: August 15, 2024 at 11:25 a.m.

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