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Letter: Together, we will build a much better world for abortion care, long before laws get amended and appeals filed.

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At this fraught moment in history, I am thinking about two very large groups of people and feeling grief, anger, exhaustion, and resolve. First, I am thinking about the people who, in the next several years, are not going to get the abortions they need; about people who will stay in relationships they shouldn’t; people who will mortgage their futures and safety to get access to abortions they need at the wrong time in the wrong geographic place. I am concerned the rage and anxiety about abortion in the US, the threat of prosecution in the US, Latin America, and Poland will lead people with some access to abortion options to assume they do not. 

While I am concerned that political dialogue will affect the understanding of the people who need access, I also know that the powerful systems that we’ve been creating, systems of care and connection will and do work to get people access to abortion. 

That brings me to the second group of people I am meditating on: the people having to work, now, even harder to get people the information, care, and support they need. 

The members of inroads are more than capable of holding the space needed to create this new world, and I trust that we will pick up the tools we have, take on new ones, learn from each other, and keep working. But it is certainly upsetting to see that many organizations already overextended to provide the critical abortion care their communities need, now find they have a huge set of to-dos that Roe v. Wade at least postponed and significant additional work but not many more resources. Many of us might be tired and ready to welcome reinforcements – but not reinforcements who think that because they’ve started paying attention that they are now the saviors; we need solidarity, need reinforcements ready to partner, listen, learn, sit-back, fund, care.

Together, we can and will build a much, much better world than this one for abortion care globally. Our collective efforts are already imagining and creating the communities that can support essential care and just futures with tiny, over-parsed budgets. We will keep doing this and we will provide the abortion care we need long before laws get amended and appeals filed.

Our team will get up tomorrow and the day after ready to redistribute funds, amplify the amazing voices of small and distant groups, connect allies to each other, provide access to training and foster solidarity practices, and keep building a community ready to bouey and support us.

We are also committed to calling in the elements of the philanthropic community who have chosen inaction to provide the crucial funding our communities need. We need many funders to wake up and shake up, to take an active stance on supporting abortion across the world. 

We invite you to join us in this Call To Action to Funders. Time is of the essence, and we can no longer stay quiet while philanthropic organizations that claim to support gender equality stigmatize and exclude the critical work of the abortion rights movement.

In solidarity,
Katie Gillum
inroads Executive Director