Alabama abortion fund awaits judge's decision about antiabortion Attorney General
Alabama AG Steve Marshall had threatened to treat abortion funds as accessories to people who violate the state's abortion ban
A federal judge will soon decide whether Alabama’s Attorney General can charge people who help women get out-of-state abortions.
The case is known as Yellowhammer Fund v. Attorney General of Alabama, and the Lawyering Project brought it on behalf of several organizations, including the Yellowhammer Fund, which is a nonprofit abortion advocacy and reproductive justice organization serving residents of Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Panhandle.
The group was established in Tuscaloosa in 2017 as an abortion fund but now provides community education, mutual aid, policy advocacy, and other support to the community to ensure that all people have access to the resources they need to make decisions about their bodies, families, and futures.
The case is being litigated in Montgomery. In June, the Yellowhammer Fund and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed motions for summary judgment.
In August 2022, Marshall appeared on the Jeff Poor Show, a conservative radio program, to discuss his legal priorities. He indicated that abortion funds could be seen as accessories to people who violate the state’s criminal ban on abortion. In the initial legal complaint, lawyers for the Yellowhammer Fund said another conservative writer reported Marshall would go after abortion funds without the help of local prosecutors.
Alabama’s Attorney General has the power to establish special investigations, which poses a real threat to funds that seek to help women get the reproductive care they need.
I spoke with Heidi Miller, development manager for the Fund, about what the situation in the state has been like since Marshall first threatened prosecution of their organizations and others that helped abortion-seekers. Abortion services were half the work that the fund undertook before Marshall’s threats. The fund’s lawyers are saying this is a violation of their First Amendment rights.
“We can't even give just very basic information to people about how one can access abortion care again, even in those legal states,” Miller said.
Miller said the prosecutorial threat has made abortion a hushed affair that no doctor or person can speak about. People fear inadvertently telling people where they could get one.
Right now, they provide women who approach them with links to articles from media outlets, but they can’t give information developed explicitly by them.
“It's so isolating,” Miller said of the effect it has on women who had already lived in an area where abortion was stigmatized.
Staff with the Yellowhammer Fund have continued to provide valuable services outside of abortion referrals and counseling. They provide safer sex kits with emergency contraception to people who call asking for one. They have a mobile bus that distributes diapers and baby products. Anyone from Alabama, Mississippi, or the Florida panhandle can order from them.
“It has been over a year now, but, again, we're just hoping to get a win as soon as possible so that we can make those adjustments and fund folks who need that assistance,” Miller said.