Recently, a friend of mine started volunteering for an abortion fund hotline, which basically entails carrying a special cell phone around for a week at a time and fielding calls from pregnant, scared, desperate women who need financial advice and small grants to cover the cost of having an abortion.
Her thoughtful write-up of her first week on the job is posted over on the reproductive advocacy website, RH Reality Check:
For a week, I fielded about six calls a day from women across the Pacific Northwest. These were women in tight spots: in high school, homeless, unemployed, undocumented, disabled, down on their luck, about to head into the army, just found out their wanted pregnancy had a fatal defect, rape survivors, or just having a hard time pulling together several hundreds of dollars in a few days. It really ran the gamut.
To say abortion is stigmatized in this country is to state the obvious. But we have a special brand of taboo that we foist atop even that stigma, which is the taboo of having someone else pay for a service you need – especially if it’s an abortion. Three years after Roe v. Wade, the Hyde Amendment was passed in 1976, prohibiting federal Medicaid coverage of abortion, in most circumstances. It was in this spirit that the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act was passed last year. And if you think the US would only limit financial support for women seeking abortions in the US, you’re wrong. The Helms Amendment, passed in 1973, makes sure that not a dime of US foreign aid goes toward abortion services in other countries – even if it’s legal and even if unsafe abortion is a leading cause of maternal death. In fact, the failure to provide funding and program support for those conditions for which even Helms allows exceptions means that women who have been raped—such as victims of rape in war—and those whose lives are threatened by pregnancies gone terribly wrong are denied support by U.S.-funded programs.
The idea that an abortion shouldn’t be paid for by the government comes from the broader stigma of abortion – that it’s a luxurious service we seek after we (women) do something bad. It’s this notion that receiving financial aid for the consequences of our promiscuity or carelessness only reinforces for lack of virtue. Or, more simply put, it’s a financial slut-shaming.
It’s a thoughtful piece that expertly jumps from identifying historical and cultural stigmas to identifying and dismantling the myths people currently associate with abortion funding. In other words, it’s totally worth your time and attention.
