After the leaked Dobbs Supreme Court opinion and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, many abortion rights groups saw a flood of donations and volunteer requests. Now, one organization in the Carolinas says that support has hit a plateau.
Carolina Abortion Fund, or CAF, helps people in North and South Carolina pay for and get to abortion appointments. It operates a free hotline where callers can request grants, as well as coordinate transportation and lodging for the procedure. In May and June, the group received some $210,000 combined in donations. That funding lately has leveled off at around $35,000 a month, said Kat Lewis, a CAF board member. Pre-Dobbs, average monthly donations totaled around $24,000.
“There’s always these bursts,” Lewis said. “There’s ads on TV. There’s Amy Schumer talking about threats to birth control and bodies and it comes in those waves … I think the folks in the work every day are just exhausted to the umpteenth degree.”
She said requests to volunteer with CAF’s hotline have flattened, too. In May and June, CAF’s social media was flooded with messages from people hoping to volunteer. Only about 20 out of 100 candidates followed through and became regular volunteers.
“They have their lives to go back to,” Lewis said.
Abortion is currently legal in North Carolina up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion rights supporters in the state are bracing for a continued fight over access to the procedure after Republicans narrowly failed to win a supermajority across both chambers of the statehouse.
Republicans fell one vote short of having a supermajority in the state's General Assembly. Cooper has said he would veto any measure that restricts abortion access. But his veto power is fragile, since even one House Democrat switching to vote with Republicans could tip the scales on abortion policy.
In South Carolina, abortion is legal until around 20 weeks of pregnancy. The state’s ban on abortions after roughly six weeks has been temporarily blocked, while the South Carolina Supreme Court considers whether the measure, the “fetal heartbeat” law, violates the state’s constitutional right to privacy.