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

May 4 (Reuters) - Donations have flooded into abortion clinics and abortion-rights advocacy teams since the leak of a U.S. Supreme Court draft ruling that confirmed the justices apparently poised to overturn the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade choice.

The draft ruling, which was revealed 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 large operating budgets in addition to small, impartial clinics and regional groups which might be usually neglected.

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NARAL Pro-Choice America, a nonprofit that received $12.9 million in donations in fiscal year 2021, noticed a 1,403% improve in donations within the 24 hours after the information broke in comparison with the day earlier than, spokesperson Kristin Ford stated. Fifty-one % of donors were giving for the first time.

Between Monday night time and midday Wednesday, greater than 4,000 donors gave greater than $100,000 to the Abortion Care Network, a national association of 150 impartial U.S. abortion clinics. That was the most important wave of donations over that length of time that the affiliation had ever obtained.

The money will go directly to the clinics and assist them keep open to supply reproductive health providers even when state legal guidelines prohibit them from offering abortions, the network's Executive

Director Nikki Madsen said.

"We will continue to be combating within the states to bring back abortion entry," Madsen said. "We have to maintain those clinics open in that interim."

Advocates both for and towards abortion rights say they are going to use the Supreme Court docket's ruling, anticipated by the end of June, to mobilize voters for the 2022 midterm elections. Nationwide anti-abortion teams Susan B. Anthony Checklist and March for Life didn't immediately reply to inquiries about donations.

Deliberate Parenthood and Emily's Record, teams that advocate for reproductive rights, also did not instantly respond.

The Roe Fund, an abortion fund in Oklahoma that provides cash to the state's clinics to help patients' procedures, had greater than 8,000 donors contribute more than $50,000 on Tuesday, the fund's Treasurer Janice Massey stated.

On Tuesday night, Oklahoma enacted a regulation banning abortions after six weeks of being pregnant, shutting down almost all abortion providers within the state. learn extra

"That is definitely the largest surge (in donations) I've seen in the 13 years I've been doing this work," Massey said.

The Kentucky Health Justice Community, one other abortion fund, received greater than 1,000 donations with a mean value of $50 since Monday evening, Operations Director Ashley Jacobs mentioned on Wednesday. When a Kentucky regulation suspended in-state abortion companies for eight days in April, the community assisted sufferers traveling to Ohio and Indiana for abortions.

Donors additionally gave to organizations in areas that could see an inflow of sufferers seeking abortions as a result of local legal guidelines protect abortion rights.

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

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

Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.