In May 2025 The Brigid Alliance was feature in this Inside Philanthropy article, “Trump 2.0 and Abortion: Surging Need, A Precarious Funding Landscape.” Read it at its original link here, or in a designed PDF version here, or below.
What does abortion access — and philanthropic support for abortion rights — look like in the second Trump administration? In recent years, reproductive rights groups have fought hard to defend abortion access from ongoing conservative assaults. Advocates have also faced — and continue to face — an uncertain funding landscape as philanthropic support has rollercoastered in response.
In 2021, donations poured in when Texas effectively banned abortion, as IP’s Dawn Wolfe reported. The following May, news of the Supreme Court’s intention to reverse Roe v. Wade, which was leaked to Politico, unleashed a flood of so-called “rage giving,” but as Wolfe found a year after Dobbs, that giving ebbed over time. And earlier this year, Wolfe reported that “despite the real threat to abortion rights nationwide created by Trump’s win and the GOP’s new federal government trifecta,” abortion rights groups experienced only a modest post-election funding boost — far smaller than the gains after the Dobbs decision.
In the arena of public opinion, support for reproductive rights surged following Dobbs and several states enshrined the right to abortion in their constitutions. At the same time, other states tightened abortion restrictions, putting growing numbers of women at risk.
Since Trump took office again, abortion has been overshadowed by a whirlwind of budget cuts, policy overhauls and mass firings. But the administration’s actions on reproductive rights have been corrosive, as well: It allowed restrictions on emergency abortion care, stopped enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act (and pardoned activists who had violated it), froze Title X funding for clinics providing reproductive healthcare, and scrubbed information about reproductive health from government web pages, to name just a few early actions. These policy changes “have had an especially detrimental impact on the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of people in the U.S. and across the world,” according to the Guttmacher Institute.
For women living in states with strict abortion laws, the need is greater than ever. The Brigid Alliance serves women from these states — 63% of its clients travel from the South, most from Texas, Georgia and Florida. The organization provides travel and practical support, including lodging, food and childcare. Many Brigid Alliance clients are in a later stage of pregnancy, when there are fewer options available, as IP reported in a piece on the Alliance last year. At that time, the Brigid Alliance was seeing stepped up demand; that seems likely to continue as more states enact abortion restrictions and the Trump administration contributes to a climate that is increasingly hostile to reproductive rights.
“The laws have had a chilling effect, as have efforts to make it more difficult for women to get the information they need,” said Brigid Alliance executive director Serra Sippel. “We want to figure out how to get information to people to reduce and mitigate the misinformation and stigma and the fear. It’s a very precarious time.”
An uncertain funding landscape for abortion organizations and abortion seekers
The Brigid Alliance’s support from funders has followed the same roller coaster trajectory that many abortion rights groups have experienced in recent years — and the peaks and valleys have been particularly steep. The organization was founded in 2018, and until the 2022 Dobbs leak, it had 1,480 donors. Then, from May through December that year, the organization’s donor list shot to 14,559 — a 983% increase. But 76% of those donors have not given to the organization since.
Such dramatic shifts in support are disorienting, particularly because the need appears only likely to increase. State restrictions have forced more women to travel further for care, for example, while travel costs continue to rise. To date, the Brigid Alliance has been buoyed by a reliable core group of funders, according to Sippel. “We have traditionally, historically relied on individual donations and contributions — that has always made up the majority of our revenue, and so I think that has really set us up for strong financial sustainability. But it’s not one and done. It’s a constant challenge.”
Sippel believes the year ahead will be critical for abortion rights. “We’re seeing attacks on every avenue to access,” she said. “We’re seeing state legislation imposing earlier-in-gestation abortion bans, bills criminalizing women for abortions and even miscarriages — the list goes on.” Meanwhile, the number of independent clinics that have been forced to close, or to stop providing abortion care, has risen steadily since Roe was overturned, according to the Abortion Care Network.
Abortion advocates are also anticipating more restrictions on medication abortion, which accounted for 63% of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023. Some conservative justices on the Supreme Court have expressed interest in reviving the 1873 Comstock Act, which would make it illegal to send abortion medication through the mail.
The Trump administration also seems intent on targeting abortion medication, despite recent actions that confused the issue. Last week, the administration opposed an effort by several state attorneys general to limit access to the abortion drug mifapristone. Some media outlets interpreted this as a gesture of support for medication abortion. But Jessica Valenti, who researches and writes on the subject for her Substack, Abortion Today, believes the media misinterpreted the administration’s ultimate goal: to prevent access to abortion medication through the FDA.
Abortion as a social justice issue
The right to abortion continues to have the support of a majority of Americans, despite conservative efforts to erode it. Abortion access has also had the backing of some big funders, including the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Michael Bloomberg, MacKenzie Scott and a number of others. But it is an area that could use more philanthropic support, and the need is more urgent than ever; for example, see Dawn Wolfe’s recent article on efforts to keep abortion patients and providers safe from assault and harassment.
Oriaku Njoku, then the executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, made the argument for more funding in an IP guest article titled “A Love Letter to Philanthropy,” written months before Trump took office. She urged philanthropy: “Fund abortion access like you recognize the urgency of the situation. Like you care that people have to travel across state lines to get basic healthcare. Like you see the intersections of issues impacting our lives and communities every day.”
As Njoku made clear, funders who care about equity and social justice should consider including abortion access in their funding priorities, since restrictions fall heaviest on those who can least afford it. Wealthy families can easily pay for the cost of the procedure, even when it involves travel out of state and several nights in a hotel. The financial burden is prohibitive — and in many cases impossible — for disadvantaged families, like those who reach out to the Brigid Alliance.
Half of the organization’s clients make less than $500 a month. “Most are low income, or have no income at all,” Sippel said. “The vast majority of our clients are people of color. Many of our clients are not housed, and some may lose housing or their place at a shelter if they’re out of town for two or three days to get a procedure. Lost wages are another issue that so many of our clients face; they aren’t salaried workers so they can’t just take three days off. These are the people who pay the highest price when you restrict abortion.”
Article originally posted on Inside Philanthropy. Read it here: www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/trump-2-0-and-abortion-surging-need-a-precarious-funding-landscape