‘We’re still here’: How a Mississippi abortion fund is keeping on post-Dobbs

This week, we’re talking to Laurie Bertram Roberts, who heads up the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. I’ve been talking with Laurie since 2016, and I walk away from every conversation we have with a greater understanding of my beat than when the conversation began. I’m so grateful for her wisdom and her work. You can support that work by donating here.

A lot of abortion fund leaders I’ve spoken to have mentioned a severe drop-off in support a few months after the Dobbs decision. Is that familiar to you?

Absolutely. And something that’s also going unsaid is that there is this very conscious shift in abortion funds to scale up and pay staff, especially in larger abortion funds. So how do you do that when you’re trying to provide the most support for your patients? There’s a lotta guilt in nonprofits around—I’ll just say for myself and I know a lot of other leaders — we feel guilty when we get paid.

When we know our abortion funding is getting cut, we usually make that first cut to ourselves.

And that’s not a sustainable way to work.

No, not at all. And I’m at this point now where it’s like, that’s not a sacrifice I am willing to make. I finally have health insurance. I’m not gonna not have health insurance.

Can you talk a little bit about the dynamic of doing this work in the South?

I feel like as a Southerner, you get this when I say this, because sometimes when I say this to people from up North, they think I’m exaggerating. It’s like, no, motherfuckers straight up abandon us. They’ll fund us for a year. And they’ll dine out on it for media cache, and then they’ll slowly disappear. But while they’re around, they’ll meddle. So instead of just funding whoever’s already doing the work—they might not like that group for whatever reason. For our group, it’s because we’re too Black, or too poor, we don’t have the right education, I’ve had this conversation with you before.

The other thing that’s happening is that national money is going into these groups who are using the language of reproductive justice to describe their mission, but they don’t fund abortion. They do everything but fund abortion. So it’s like, “Oh, I want to fund an abortion fund, but maybe not.” Right? Like, “I want to say I’m doing work around abortion, but maybe I could just fund contraception instead.”

What are you seeing when it comes to funding for crisis pregnancy centers? I know that’s different from what you’re talking about, but I think maybe it’s another branch of this dynamic.

CPCs are getting a huge influx of money. Because there’s a tax break now in Mississippi. And allegedly, there’s like a $10 million pot of money just sitting there waiting for these to be dispersed to the CPCs. And by the way, there are very few CPCs in the Delta, they’re mostly in white areas. It’s a case study for how CPCs tell on themselves with whose babies they care about.

Anyway, we’re ineligible for that money, because in order to get that money, you have to say you do not do work around abortion. You can’t refer people for abortion. It’s a gag order.

We all know going to CPCs comes with a cost. Ain’t no free lunch. All that comes with the side of Jesus, and shaming and lies. And I don’t know, Becca, I don’t know how to compete with that kind of funding. I guess I’m not even trying to compete with them, it’s just that people shouldn’t have to be at the mercy of them.

Has MRFF’s work had to change at all post-Dobbs?

It’s the same stuff. Yeah. The difference is it’s just harder.

Before we would have been able to refer people to the Jackson clinic for $250, and that would cover them. Now, people need $1500 when you factor in travel and child care and all that.

I’ve never heard from so many white women who need help, too. What I’ve observed is, these are people who wouldn’t have needed us in the past because they have enough resources to have gotten to Tuscaloosa or Jackson or New Orleans or even Pensacola when it was open. But Carbondale, Illinois? Or all the way to DC? That’s different.

Is there something that y’all have accomplished over the past year that you’re really proud of?

We’re still here.