Before the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion leak hit the headlines — and the avalanche of legislation criminalizing safe abortion access arrived in states across the country — grassroots organizers were bracing for and fighting against the fall of Roe v. Wade.
In 2019, groups across New Mexico pushed to overturn a dormant 1969 ban on abortion that would have gone into effect as soon as Roe was overturned. Their efforts, unrecognized and underfunded by philanthropy, were unsuccessful.
Fortunately, things didn’t end there. Over the next two years — with continued support from our organization, Borealis Philanthropy, and other donors — reproductive-justice nonprofits such as Bold Futures mobilized a broad coalition of New Mexicans, including LGBTQ and Indigenous people, to testify before the state legislature on the need for abortion access and protections.
This time their work paid off.
Last year, New Mexico’s legislature passed the Respect New Mexico Women and Families Act, which repealed the old law and prevented New Mexico from joining the 26 states currently expected to ban abortion if Roe is overturned. The legislation leaves New Mexico as one of the only southern states with legal and safe access to abortion care, even though abortion remains unprotected by the state constitution.
The lesson here is clear: Local and state community organizing is happening, whether we fund it or not. But when we do provide necessary capital, in ways and at levels that are meaningful, we can all win.
The extreme right knows this well. The efforts we’re seeing to control bodies and communities are intentional and connected. This includes not only the gutting and now likely overturning of Roe, but legislation targeting transgender kids and teens, attacks on voting rights, and, possibly up next, the erosion of marriage equality.
These are all the result of decades of careful coordination, organizing, and fundraising to support local and state strategies, including a recent influx of money to conservative groups. This powerfully interconnected strategy has unquestionably paid off for those pushing extreme, unpopular, and harmful positions on abortion and other issues.
Unlike philanthropists on the right, large progressive nonprofits and grant makers have focused more narrowly on individual campaigns, policies, and issues. In the process, they have missed opportunities to invest in long-term power and relationship building at the state level, where new ideas, such as the Texas abortion law, take hold.
This moment demands that donors who care about equity, safety, and reproductive justice act quickly and decisively and that they embrace an intersectional approach to giving. That means stepping up funding for groups led by LGBTQ+ people and leaders of color who have worked for years with minimal support to lessen reproductive care gaps for all Americans.
Focusing on Equity
Solutions and policies don’t produce equitable results if they don’t address wider systems of oppression, including racism, sexism, ableism, and classism. Trans and queer organizers of color understand this well. Although many operate on a shoestring, they have managed to advance reproductive justice across the country through grassroots advocacy, coalition building, and a deep understanding of local landscapes.
They are groups such as Spark Reproductive Justice Now, which is working in Georgia to end the shackling of pregnant imprisoned people, and the Knights and Orchids Society in Alabama, which brings the voices of Black queer and trans people to public-health debates and provides full-spectrum abortion services to these groups.
Movements like these, built over years, are a reminder that, while the fall of Roe would be a devastating step backward, addressing false narratives about abortion access in this country is imperative if we are to effectively fight back. In reality, Roe never granted full protection or access to safe abortion for all Americans. Instead, it provided access mostly to white, cisgender women, and only through private health care and clinics that to many people are unaffordable and often hard to reach. As a result, communities of color and queer people have long organized and advocated for sexual and reproductive health services in settings that feel safe.
History has proven that criminalizing abortion will not keep people from making decisions about their reproductive health, including abortion care. Instead, it will deepen and further enshrine societal inequities that disproportionately harm LGBTQ+ people and communities of color.
Grassroots organizers intimately know what the next, most powerful chapter of this work can look like. More than ever, grant makers need to accelerate their support to these groups. And they need to provide long-term, unrestricted, and rapid response funding to fight back against the unpredictable legislative environment ahead.
Donors also need to recognize that the fall of Roe is not an isolated event but part of a coordinated effort to systematically undermine rights, including marriage equality, access to birth control, and protections for transgender kids and teens. Multiple attacks on voting rights chip away at all of the above, threatening Americans’ fundamental right to fair representation at the ballot box.
Grant makers cannot afford to continue funding in the same ways and hoping for different outcomes. If we want communities to build and not just defend, to dream and not just respond, to create powerful strategies for change and not merely pivot to or from the latest attack, foundations must invest abundantly in long-term grassroots organizing. Such work has always been and will always be the path to lasting change.
