Today, The Brigid Alliance, an organization that provides practical, logistical and financial support for people seeking reproductive health services, announced the expansion of its block funding program – a clinic-based model designed to help more abortion seekers overcome the devastating financial and logistical barriers that keep them from accessing care.
The expansion comes as abortion bans and escalating attacks on reproductive care force more patients to travel for abortion care, require them to go farther, deepen procedure-cost gaps for the clinics serving them, and increase the need for flexible funding that can prevent delays in care and address the shrinking pool of financial support for independent clinics.
Block funding allows The Brigid Alliance to allocate resources directly to trusted clinic partners to cover three core areas:
- Practical & logistical support, including transportation, lodging, child care and meals;
- Procedure & medication support that ensures patients are not turned away due to last-minute funding shortfalls;
- Contraceptive care, which gives patients the option of accessing voluntary comprehensive contraceptive care before returning home. (Many clients travel from contraceptive deserts and areas with limited access to family planning services.)
The program formally broadens The Brigid Alliance’s model to serve pregnant people across gestational ages: while the organization will continue its hallmark, individualized support for patients in the 2nd and 3rd trimester, block funding gives clinic partners support for early intervention, when care is more accessible and less expensive, and to prevent delays that push patients later into pregnancy.
This year, The Brigid Alliance is strategically expanding its block funding program from three clinic partners to nine, and increasing its investment tenfold in FY26, with a goal of reaching approximately 900 clients through block funding. The organization plans to grow the program to $1 million in FY27.
In states with abortion bans, travel time has quadrupled for patients seeking care from under three hours to more than 11, with overnight stays surging from 5% to 58% of cases. The cumulative effect pushes people further into pregnancy – abortions at 13 weeks or later have doubled from 8% to 17% – meaning patients across the country need access to more specialized, complex care.
Overall, 42% of abortion patients face catastrophic health expenditures, and are forced to choose between care and basic needs like food and housing. For those traveling out of state, that figure jumps to 65%.
“Abortion bans and escalating attacks on all forms of reproductive and family planning care are forcing people to travel farther, navigate more barriers, and pay higher costs before they can get to care – delays that push patients later into pregnancy and make getting help feel impossible,” said Serra Sippel, Executive Director at The Brigid Alliance. “Block funding is about meeting patients earlier and preventing those delays. By getting resources directly to the clinics we already trust, we can help providers respond in real time, covering travel, lodging, procedure costs, child care, contraception, and other essential support so people can get the care they need and return home safely and with dignity. Our goal is to maximize the time and efforts of our patient coordinators, and ensure we help the most people possible. ”
Participating partner clinics will prioritize patients traveling from Southern states and other regions where clients often face compounded barriers including highly restrictive abortion bans, geographic isolation, legal and safety concerns, misinformation, and financial hardship. Current clinic partners include Wellspring Health Access, The Women’s Centers, RISE Collective, Bristol Women’s Health, DuPont Clinic, Partners in Abortion Care and more.
The program also reflects a broader shift in the abortion-access funding landscape. Since Dobbs, more people need help covering the costs of their abortions, procedure-funding gaps have grown, and independent clinics – particularly all-trimester clinics and clinics serving patients from states with bans – have been stretched thin.
The expansion builds on lessons from The Brigid Alliance’s pilot programs, including its 2024 practical-support block funding initiative, its 2025 Last Mile Fund pilot, and its contraceptive care block funding pilot with the DuPont Clinic. The Last Mile Fund, which covers direct procedure funding, launched in January 2025 as a six-month rapid-response pilot, designed to close last-minute gaps when other funding sources fell through. The pilot ultimately disbursed more than $204,000 to clients — showing the scale of unmet need and the urgency of last-minute procedure cost gaps. Some clinics in the pilot even cited the fund’s role in their survival:
“Quite frankly, [the LMF has] been a large part of what has allowed us to stay open and keep saying yes to patients,” one partner noted.
Since its founding in 2018, The Brigid Alliance has helped more than 9,534 clients from all 50 states and beyond travel for abortion care.