Chloe, a driver with the Tampa Bay Abortion Fund, knows how important a role she plays in people’s lives. “I’m a lifeline,” she says. “Once I get them in my car, they’re in my care.”
Like many practical support volunteers, Chloe does more than just drive patients home. She provides critical care and support in a time of need.
Like many practical support volunteers, Chloe does more than just drive patients home. She provides critical care and support in a time of need. “I don’t know what the protocol is for going into someone’s home, tucking them in bed, doing their dishes, feeding their kids who are still there because mommy’s now sleeping, and the babysitter went home,” she explains. “There’s no handbook for that. But I do it, and I feel like I have to do it. I want our clients to be able to trust their drivers.”
In the past few months, our collective consciousness has been permeated by a new vocabulary: pandemic, quarantine, frontline.
But one particular phrase has been wholly familiar to groups of dedicated volunteers long before the world was rocked by COVID-19—mutual aid.
Mutual aid is difficult to define because it is so situationally specific and conditional on who gives it and who receives it. To the dedicated drivers who offer their cars, time, and often money to the patients they drive to and from appointments at abortion clinics, mutual aid is one of the key segments of the fight for abortion access.
Michelle Loo, a coordinator for DAPSN, the D.C./Maryland/Virginia Abortion Practical Support Network, says mutual aid networks rely on each other throughout the process.
“That’s what this kind of mutual aid is about, caring for our community,” they told me. “It’s about asserting our belief that everyone is part of our community and that we have to take care of everyone. And that means people you don’t know.”
There isn’t one collective noun for these kinds of volunteers. While “clinic escorts” and “clinic defenders” may immediately conjure images of brightly vested volunteers standing guard to keep rabid protesters at bay, “abortion practical support volunteer” doesn’t have the same snappy ring to it.
Perhaps this is because one of the biggest failings of the pro-choice movement has been ignoring what is glaringly obvious to the majority of people who seek abortion: It’s not a true choice if it can’t be easily accessed.
The ability to easily and safely access abortion is frequently taken for granted by the white, straight, cisgender women who run the bulk of the pro-choice nonprofit industry. It’s precisely for this reason that a number of abortion funds, doulas, and drivers have sprung up across the nation in the past few years.
While national organizations such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America focus primarily on the legality of abortion and the rights of clinics to perform abortions, grassroots reproductive justice collectives and nonprofits work with patients on the ground to make sure that, practically speaking, pregnant people can access abortion care.
Even high profile Supreme Court cases like June Medical Services v. Russo, which sided with the Louisiana clinic and allowed it to keep operating without obtaining unnecessary admitting privileges, isn’t enough to guarantee that the most disadvantaged pregnant people can physically access abortion services.
If patients aren’t able to reach a clinic, it means that people seeking abortion care may not actually have a choice.
Without the organizations that do abortion-related mutual aid work, most of which are helmed by Black women and women of color, the legality of abortion is somewhat beside the point. After all, if patients aren’t able to reach a clinic, it means that people seeking abortion care may not actually have a choice.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the ability to access abortion care even for the wealthiest and well connected has been disrupted.
States like Texas wavered on deeming abortion as unessential so many times that the legality of it didn’t even matter in the end. Patients were left confused and isolated, unable to arrange time off from work or childcare. And, with the rapid reversals of the courts, many were ultimately unable to receive the abortions they needed.
The crisis has also made obvious what practical support volunteers already know: mutual aid networks must fill in the gaps of our health care system, particularly when periods of upheaval leave our nation’s most vulnerable populations defenseless.
Nearly 20 percent of all abortion patients in the United States have to travel upwards of fifty miles to their nearest clinic, in places often inaccessible by cheap public transportation.
Even if an abortion patient is aware of funds like the Brigid Alliance—which specifically cover the costs of travel to and from clinics—the simple act of getting from an airport to a hotel, or from a hotel to a clinic, can be impossible for an exhausted pregnant person travelling alone.
Mainstream media focuses a lot of attention on abortion providers and clinic escorts—and rightfully so. Wading through protesters to obtain abortion care is a special kind of hell for patients, and the volunteers who walk with them are heroes.
The less sexy support that drivers give, ranging from buying snacks to wiping blood off of car seats, doesn’t get the same level of headline-grabbing attention. But they are involved in every step of the process.
And this pandemic has shown us the importance of those acts of care, and for the need to help our own communities—even if we have to expand our definitions of what community is.