Donations to U.S. abortion rights groups, clinics surge after Supreme Court docket leak

Might 4 (Reuters) - Donations have flooded into abortion clinics and abortion-rights advocacy groups because the leak of a U.S. Supreme Court docket draft ruling that showed the justices apparently poised to overturn the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade determination.

The draft ruling, which was published by Politico on Monday night, sparked a frenzy of giving by Individuals to abortion clinics, groups that help people pay for abortions and organizations looking for to protect abortion entry.

Beneficiaries included national organizations with giant working budgets as well as small, impartial clinics and regional teams which might be often neglected.

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NARAL Pro-Choice America, a nonprofit that acquired $12.9 million in donations in fiscal yr 2021, noticed a 1,403% increase in donations in the 24 hours after the news broke compared to the day earlier than, spokesperson Kristin Ford mentioned. Fifty-one p.c of donors were giving for the primary time.

Between Monday evening and midday Wednesday, greater than 4,000 donors gave more than $100,000 to the Abortion Care Community, a nationwide affiliation of 150 independent U.S. abortion clinics. That was the largest wave of donations over that length of time that the affiliation had ever acquired.

The cash will go on to the clinics and help them keep open to offer reproductive well being services even when state legal guidelines prohibit them from providing abortions, the network's Executive

Director Nikki Madsen said.

"We will continue to be preventing in the states to convey back abortion entry," Madsen said. "We have to hold these clinics open in that interim."

Advocates both for and against abortion rights say they may use the Supreme Court docket's ruling, anticipated by the end of June, to mobilize voters for the 2022 midterm elections. Nationwide anti-abortion groups Susan B. Anthony Record and March for Life did not immediately reply to inquiries about donations.

Deliberate Parenthood and Emily's Listing, teams that advocate for reproductive rights, additionally didn't immediately respond.

The Roe Fund, an abortion fund in Oklahoma that gives cash to the state's clinics to support sufferers' procedures, had greater than 8,000 donors contribute greater than $50,000 on Tuesday, the fund's Treasurer Janice Massey mentioned.

On Tuesday evening, Oklahoma enacted a law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, shutting down nearly all abortion services in the state. learn more

"This is definitely the biggest surge (in donations) I've seen within the 13 years I have been doing this work," Massey mentioned.

The Kentucky Health Justice Community, one other abortion fund, obtained more than 1,000 donations with a mean worth of $50 since Monday night, Operations Director Ashley Jacobs said on Wednesday. When a Kentucky legislation suspended in-state abortion companies for eight days in April, the community assisted sufferers touring to Ohio and Indiana for abortions.

Donors additionally gave to organizations in areas that would see an inflow of patients in search of abortions as a result of local laws defend abortion rights.

The DC Abortion Fund, which funds abortions in the nation's capital in addition to in Virginia and Maryland, obtained greater than $105,000 in donations between Monday evening and Wednesday morning, spokesperson Devin Simpson stated.

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Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Modifying by Colleen Jenkins and Cynthia Osterman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.