Recently, our Communications Manager, Jordyn Hester, interviewed Chicago Abortion Fund’s Director of Advocacy and Communications, Alicia Hurtado, for a Q&A. The Chicago Abortion Fund is a non-profit organization that advocates for reproductive autonomy by providing support to people seeking abortions and working toward political and cultural change. With this Q&A, we wanted to provide insight into their work and explore their role in achieving Reproductive Justice.
Jordyn Hester: What is the Chicago Abortion Fund’s role in achieving reproductive justice?
Alicia Hurtado: The Chicago Abortion Fund is Illinois’ statewide abortion fund, and we are the largest abortion fund in the country. We provide financial, logistical, and emotional support to people who are facing barriers to abortion care – whether that is through a Planned Parenthood clinic, independent abortion clinic, hospital, or telehealth provider. Our case managers provide individualized case management to support people in overcoming the unique challenges they face, and we have not had to turn away a single person relying on Illinois for care since 2019.
In addition to our direct service work, CAF collaborates with policymakers to advance legislation and initiatives that address the barriers we support people through every day. Pre-Dobbs, we won Illinois Medicaid coverage of abortion and repealing Parental Notice of abortion. Post-Dobbs we advanced landmark patient & provider protections for abortion seekers and trans people, passed a full-spectrum birth equity bill, and secured historic city & state funding in the abortion access ecosystem.
Through all of our work, we are focused on creating a shift in our culture that normalizes abortion, affirms the experiences of people who have had abortions, and demands a world where everyone has the reproductive freedoms they deserve.
Hester: Why is community so important in the fight for and preservation of reproductive rights and reproductive justice? How do you all incorporate community in your work?
Hurtado: Building a community of people who are dedicated to breaking down barriers to and stigma around abortion care is key! Particularly in a time when people are leaning on their communities to find accurate information about their resources and options, community is one of our greatest resources against the stigma-filled disinformation campaign that abortion seekers are facing.
Because of this, CAF incorporates community-building into our work in many different ways! For people who have had abortions, we host our ‘A Home Here’ virtual post-abortion community circles each month, for folks to share their experiences, connect, and be in a safe space together. In Chicago, our volunteer Movement Building Cohort offers an Unapologetically Pro-Abortion teach-in to community groups, and tables with resources at events citywide. Each year from March through May, we train up abortion access ambassadors to talk about CAF in their community & raise funds that directly go towards breaking down barriers to abortion care during our Fund-A-Thon campaign – this year we had over 100 participants in Illinois & beyond who mobilized over 1,800 people in their communities to raise $310K!
Finally, we host special community building events for our Funding Abortion Monthly (FAM) that supports CAF with a monthly donation, and our Investors For Abortion Access who support CAF at a level of $1,000 or more each year. These supporters help us sustain our work long term, to ensure that we can continue to be there for people facing barriers to care from across the country.
Hester: I follow you all on social media and know that the Chicago Abortion Fund is active in mobilization. How do you all empower people to act in achieving reproductive justice?
Hurtado: Mobilization can happen in so many ways – from large scale to small scale. Through our social media (on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, Twitter/X, Bluesky, Threads… and even LinkedIn!) we share quick ways for people to show up for abortion access and reproductive justice, like filling out witness slips. We also share opportunities to gather in community to make a difference and meet like-minded people, like fundraisers, virtual events, mass actions, and teach-ins; and we share more long-term ways to get involved, like participating in our annual Fund-A-Thon.
We focus on sprinkling in political education in addition to sharing opportunities to get involved. Some folks are already ready to be mobilized when they see an ask for support, but others might need to come across posts about the current landscape, the outsized role Illinois is playing in ensuring people have access to abortion, and the work that CAF does in service of a vision of reproductive justice. Some might be drawn in by seeing a meme or relevant TikTok trend! We know that there is so much information fatigue and disinformation out there, and so contextualizing the fight for abortion access to bring in new people and deepen people’s understanding is just as important as sharing calls to action.
Hester: I noticed that you all have a program called Complex Abortion Regional Line for Access (CARLA) in partnership with Chicago hospitals. What was the catalyst for starting a program like this, and what do you hope the impact is going to be?
Hurtado: The CARLA program was created to respond to the influx of people requiring complex, hospital-based care post-Dobbs. Before the Dobbs decision, we were seeing just a handful of these more complex cases each month, less than 5. Typically, these callers would make it to an appointment at a freestanding clinic, and then learn that, due to a more complex medical condition, they had to receive care in a hospital setting. CAF would reach out to all of our hospital partners to see who had availability that worked with our caller’s schedule, figure out the logistical or travel needs for either staying in Chicago or leaving and coming back, and finally navigate them to care.
In the months following the fall of Roe v. Wade, our monthly average of these complex cases rose to 40-50 people each month – many of whom were traveling across multiple state lines for care. As a result, CAF collaborated with Chicago-area hospitals to create CARLA, a place providers can call when they have a patient that has needs that are too complex for an out-patient setting. CARLA’s CAF-trained nurse navigators are embedded in the hospital system, and can find the earliest appointment that works for the patient. Next, they are connected to CAF’s complex care team to support with booking and rebooking any travel or lodging, finding rides to and from their appointment, and paying for the now potentially much more costly care.
Hester: Over the past few years, we’ve seen a rollback in reproductive rights across the country and continue to see attacks on bodily autonomy. What is the Chicago Abortion Fund’s primary focus right now in this current political climate?
Hurtado: Through our helpline, CAF remains committed to ensuring that the political wins our movement has won in Illinois and the care landscape we have built, are not only accessible to people that have the means to pay for it. In the three years since the fall of Roe v. Wade, we have fielded over 40,000 support requests from 40+ states, and distributed over $15 million in direct abortion support.
CAF has been around for 40 years, and we continue to be focused on meeting the moment for people who need abortion care – through meeting the immediate needs that have been exacerbated by the ongoing reproductive health crisis, and advocating for systemic change to reduce and eliminate barriers to care. This includes breaking down the cultural barrier of abortion stigma in our communities, as well as political and legal shifts!
Hester: Illinois is a sanctuary state for reproductive rights. That’s great, and I’m happy to live in a state that recognizes the importance of autonomy. However, I think the assumption is that things over here are perfect, especially in Chicago. What are some things that the city and state still have to work on in order to fully achieve reproductive justice? What role does the Chicago Abortion Fund have in creating some of those changes?
Hurtado: We are so grateful to do this work in Illinois – we have an incredible network of elected officials, clinic partners, and advocates that are working every day to support people from our state and beyond who are relying on Illinois for the abortion care they want, need, and deserve. We live in a state, and a city, where abortion is treated as exactly what it is, healthcare.
On the abortion access front, we still have work to do to continue to respond to this moment. Unfortunately the crisis we are facing is not going away any time soon. It took anti-abortion extremists 50 years to roll back the bare minimum rights we have with Roe v. Wade, and we have to be in this for the long haul. We already see this administration attacking the abortion access infrastructure, and we know that – because Illinois is a national access point for care, with nearly 1 in 4 people who cross state lines for care relying on our state – attacks from seemingly far away have an impact here.
CAF is here to meet the moment, in getting people to the abortion care they need, and to continuing to work with partners across our ecosystem to work towards a reality where everyone can access the care they need.
If you want to learn more about the Chicago Abortion Fund, click here to visit their website!