Medical debt from abortions rising across country

Some organizations, like the Debt Collective, have sought to draw attention to an increasing problem further impoverishing people most in need.

The rising cost of abortion care has led many women to use credit cards to pay at the clinics they go to, in addition to using them to pay for all the expenses associated with travel and lodging.

The new reality has led some organizations to prioritize debt relief for individuals who find themselves in situations where they need or want to end a pregnancy. Among those groups is the Debt Collective, which grew out of the Occupy Wall Street movement. They recently announced a $50,000 grant to help abortion funds support women in these situations. Its spokesman, Braxton Brewington, spoke to me over the phone.

“All of these types of lost wages and incurring debt compounds on each other,” Brewington said. “And we're hearing of folks who are literally forced to have to put healthcare on credit cards or being or having to take out payday loans.”

This is another reason that the reproductive justice movement must end the Hyde Amendment, which bars Medicaid from paying for abortions. We need insurance companies to pay for the care. And, self-evidently, we must restore abortion access to the states where it is illegal and make an effort to increase the number of clinics to cover most counties in the country.

This is a fair criticism for the Democratic Party, as in many quarters, it still believes it shouldn’t support the Hyde Amendment’s repeal. Outgoing President Joe Biden was ambivalent about abortion, as described in a disorderly speech in which he linked adherent Catholicism with a distaste for abortion. For most of his career, he supported the Hyde Amendment. That changed in the 2020 campaign. He sought to repeal it initially, but there wasn’t a concerted effort over a prolonged period, and it wasn’t prioritized. There was also pressure from above on foremost reproductive rights leaders to downplay the concerns. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized some national organizations for dragging their feet.

When the Affordable Care Act was written, there was a staunch effort on the part of reproductive rights leaders to mandate that insurance companies would pay for abortions. Currently, the ACA doesn’t require plans to cover it. That’s another point that’s fair to criticize former President Barack Obama on. He was willing to compromise on those things to get it passed. It was part of his common-ground approach to governance.

Bill Clinton, for his part, called for its repeal in 1993 when he assumed office, according to a New York Times editorial published on April 1st of that year. His wife, Hillary Clinton, also called for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment when she campaigned in 2016. They didn’t do it while in office, though.

Kamala Harris likewise campaigned with that promise.

If we go back to President Jimmy Carter, he was the least supportive of abortion rights of any Democratic President in the last 50 years. In 1977, Gloria Steinem chaired a panel of experts and heavily criticized Carter for his refusal to push for the Hyde Amendment’s repeal.

“I do not see how this administration can speak of human rights and then deny to the poor women of this country the basic right of reproductive freedom,” Steinem said at the time, as reported by the Gannett News Service.

Back to the Debt Collective. With the credit cards, they leave paper trails that zealous prosecutors can subpoena to establish that a woman got an abortion in another state. With jurisdictional conflicts, it’s possible that they could lead to prosecutions in places where the district attorney or attorney general is campaigning against reproductive rights.

One hundred million people in America have medical debt, Brewington told me. After seeing an influx of cash after the Dobbs decision, the donations to abortion funds began drying up. That’s exacerbated the situation.

“We're starting to see this emergence of what we are calling and framing as abortion debt,” Brewington said. “And we think it's only going to get worse as abortion restrictions across the country continue to increase, As healthcare continues to become now more affordable overall.