When the one-two punch of Senate Bill 8—a 2021 Texas law that barred nearly all abortion care —and the U.S. Supreme Court’s subsequent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade befell Texans, Blanca Murillo felt like she was on the brink of hopelessness. Murillo had spent her entire career in the reproductive rights movement in Texas, and, as the development director with The Lilith Fund, the oldest abortion fund operating in the state, she worried for the many clients her group serves.
Abortion funds like Lilith work on the frontlines of abortion care, providing financial assistance for the procedure or for travel, hotel stays, and childcare. The nonprofit, grassroots groups—often under the radar relative to large national organizations like Planned Parenthood—serve as a critical bridge to help largely low-income people of color access out-of-state care. And their hands are full under Texas’ strict abortion bans: More than 28,000 people are now forced to flee the nation’s second-most populous state annually.
But Murillo’s despair soon shifted to hope when her group was met with a massive swell of what some call “rage donations,” sparked by anger against both SB 8 and the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision. While Lilith’s yearly budget hovered around $1 million before the back-to-back historic attacks on abortion rights, the group saw its coffers skyrocket to more than $6 million afterward. “People were understandably enraged and wanted to help. I was in awe of how much everyone cared at that time,” said Murillo.
However, those “rage donations” have dried up—not just for Lilith Fund, whose revenue has fallen by half, but for five additional Texas funds the Observer spoke with. Mirroring a nationwide “crisis,” dwindling donations to Texas—home to more abortion funds than any other state—have left groups struggling to keep up with demand.
After Dobbs, for the first time in its history, The Lilith Fund was able to give some assistance to every client who requested it, but now the future feels uncertain.
“It’s such a gift to be able to help everyone that calls us, but we don’t know how long that’s sustainable,” said Murillo. “There’s definitely the fear of, can we actually keep this going? Will we have to start turning people away or changing operations?”
May 3, 2022, demonstration in Austin (Gus Bova)
While funds grapple with a decrease in donations, the price for abortion care is rising, creating a perfect storm. Living under abortion bans, Texans are frequently forced to travel 500 to 1,500 miles for the procedure—and sometimes more—adding substantial cost to their medical care. For instance, last year Lilith Fund clients traveled an average of 1,012 miles, with the most miles traveled by a client totaling nearly 4,200—and the group says those figures are only rising this year.
Travel time for residents in banned states like Texas has increased from roughly 2.8 hours to more than 11 hours, and travel costs jumped from an average of $179 to $372, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health earlier this year that tracked access in 14 states. Of course, those costs vary and may be a modest estimate for some Texans who need to spend more than a thousand dollars in travel, say abortion fund leaders. More than half of those surveyed by researchers said their abortion care required an overnight hotel stay, while just 5 percent said the same prior to the bans. The National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) similarly found that practical support expenses—like travel, lodging, and childcare—increased by 30 percent in the past year.
The price of the procedure itself is also on the rise: Costs grew by 37 percent from 2022 to 2024, according to data from NNAF. Texas groups say this is in part due to the many logistical barriers imposed by bans that force pregnant patients to delay care and undergo abortion later in pregnancy, when it becomes more expensive and more difficult to secure, especially as some clinics do not perform abortion into the second trimester. Out-of-state clinics have also found themselves spread thin, as they now see double the number of patients that they did before the end of Roe, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Overall, demand is increasing with funds nationwide seeing 56 percent more requests than before the historic loss of abortion access.
As intake coordinator with the Texas Equal Access Fund, a North Texas-based group, Charlie Hughes hears the heightened stress from callers who are forced to trek long miles for care, primarily to New Mexico, Kansas, and Colorado. Appointments that were previously available within a day or two now could take two or three weeks, said Hughes. About 60 percent of the fund’s callers are already parents and must also secure childcare, adding another obstacle.
Like other funds, Hughes’ group saw donations jump 120 percent post-SB 8 and Dobbs and was able to support more callers in the three years that followed than in its entire 20-year history. Then came the decline, leaving the fund with an “unsustainable burden.” In June, the Texas Equal Access Fund received about 500 requests for help and was only able to fund 87 of them.
“[Callers] need to travel farther and the procedure is costing more, and so we need to find more funding while our donations decline—it’s a stressful situation all around,” Hughes said.
Similarly, per-client cost more than tripled post-Dobbs for Jane’s Due Process, an abortion fund that connects teenagers with care. While the group previously centered its legal work on helping teens navigate judicial bypass for abortions, they’ve since had to shift to funding flights, lodging, transportation, and the procedure itself, with an average cost of $1,500 per caller.
“We continue to be underfunded while the demand—and the stakes—grow,” said Lucie Arvallo, the fund’s executive director. “And it’s not as if the attacks on abortion have slowed down in Texas, we still deeply need investment, possibly now more than ever.”
Smaller than some of their counterparts in major cities, the Frontera Fund in the Rio Grande Valley serves a population within 100 miles of the Texas-Mexico border. The fund saw its modest annual budget of about $11,000 balloon to more than $650,000 from individual donations driven by 2022-era outrage. That infusion was instrumental in helping Frontera dramatically change its operations from assisting just eight callers per year in getting out-of-state care to 30 callers a month. Today, the budget has dipped by more than 70 percent as demand remains.
“We’ve had to put limits on our services,” said Zaena Zamora, Frontera Fund’s executive director. “I worry we’ll have to downsize our already small fund, and just really hope we’ll never have to close.”
Last year, The National Abortion Federation, which runs a hotline that helps cover procedure costs, cut back funding for those who qualify for its financial assistance program from 50 percent of the cost of care to 30 percent due to fewer incoming donations.
Abortion funds largely attribute the sizable drop off in contributions to abortion rights seemingly fading from the spotlight.
“Abortion was all over the news after SB 8 and then Dobbs, and getting so much attention at the time,” said Anna Rupani, executive director of Fund Texas Choice. “We are so grateful for the rush of donations, but now that there isn’t as much focus on abortion, I’m not sure people realize this is an ongoing, long-term need.”
Aggressive and intrusive legal attacks on abortion funds from anti-abortion activists and state leaders including Attorney General Ken Paxton may have also had a chilling effect on potential donors. Funds were forced to pause operations for nine months in 2023 before a court ultimately blocked an effort from Paxton encouraging district attorneys to criminally prosecute the funds.
Multiple leaders told the Observer they’ve heard first-hand from donors and foundations that philanthropy has shifted to political advocacy groups, candidates, ballot initiatives, and clinics in non-banned states. (Historically, abortion funds already receive just a small fraction of overall foundation support for reproductive rights compared to other abortion-related groups.)
In an op-ed in The Nation signed by 30 local abortion funds across the country—including five in Texas—leaders criticized the priorities of “well-funded” mainstream national reproductive rights organizations, who are “disconnected” from the needs of on-the-ground grassroots groups directly serving their communities. “Local funds have been put in a position to disproportionately hold the weight of abortion access while being abandoned based on their more radical and staunch values,” leaders wrote. “Now is not the time to put policy advocacy and wealth hoarding over material support.”
For some donors, Texas—and the South—feels like a futile investment.
“The irony of that logic to me is that you would think the groups that have withstood so many attacks on abortion and found a way to remain resilient and still standing would be the ones you would want to invest in,” said Rupani. “It’s pretty frustrating.”
And the attacks here rarely cease: During this year’s regular legislative session, Republicans took aim at abortion funds by curtailing city governments’ ability to partner with them to provide residents with practical support services. Bills filed for the ongoing special session include a proposal that would criminalize anyone who helps a teen travel for abortion without parental consent; a measure that could subject all funds to criminal prosecution; and a proposal that would empower private citizens to sue manufacturers or health providers who mail or prescribe abortion pills—a revival of a measure that failed during the regular session. That last bill, SB 6, passed out of a Senate committee on Monday. (While progress on these bills has been slowed by the Democrats’ quorum break to protect voting rights, further dismantling abortion care is a priority for both Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott, who has the power to call legislators back for multiple special sessions.)
With a mixture of gratitude for the initial boost in funding and fear of the future under depleting resources, Hughes offers a gentle reminder.
“I think some people assume that, because abortion is illegal in Texas, they don’t need to support abortion rights here—but in fact the opposite is true,” said Hughes. “We are still helping hundreds of Texans get the care they need, against all odds. Just because Texans don’t have the right to abortion in their state doesn’t mean they are not deserving of access.”
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