Given the hostility to abortion rights that is sure to be part of the second Trump administration, funders and advocates will need to get creative to win whatever fights they can in the years ahead. So far, two main strategies have emerged as the most likely paths forward for wealthy individuals, traditional foundations, corporations and small givers to consider.
Funding abortion rights via state court elections and ballot initiatives
There was some progress in resurrecting or preserving abortion rights 2024. Ballot measures to protect abortion rights passed in seven of the 10 states where they went to a vote, including in Montana. Overall, since the Dobbs decision, voters in 16 out of the 26 states that permit ballot initiatives have weighed in on the issue, with abortion rights winning in 13 of those states. Voters in Montana and Michigan also elected pro-abortion candidates to their state Supreme Courts, giving abortion-rights supporting justices the majorities in these states. And in North Carolina, Justice Allison Riggs, an abortion rights supporter, won narrowly, though the Republican candidate in that race is trying to get the result overturned. Ohio voters, on the other hand, gave Republican candidates in that state a 6-1 court majority in 2024, despite having passed a ballot measure legalizing abortion in 2023.
In short, unless or until abortion is banned nationally, the battle to keep it legal will continue to be fought in the states. A central funding framework for that state-by-state approach has been laid by the Collaborative for Gender + Reproductive Equity (CGRE), whose supporters include big-money funders like Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Ford and JPB foundations, and MacKenzie Scott.
Founded in 2018, CGRE has invested $235 million in 281 nonprofits working “to unite advocates across issue silos, defend gender, reproductive and racial equity, and work toward a future where every person has the resources and autonomy to thrive,” according to the organization’s website. CGRE, which has had a state court strategy for five years, has also spent $58.7 million on its judicial work and $47.7 million on state power-building efforts.
In Montana, for example, CGRE supports advocates focused on increasing nonpartisan civic engagement, making voters aware that court elections are on the ballot, and funding groups that use impact litigation to protect abortion rights in the Montana constitution, according to CGRE Director of Advocacy Cristina Uribe. The majority of CGRE’s grants are for either general operating or flexible project support, and nearly two-thirds offer multi-year funding — grants that continue, even after organizers win their fights .
“Many people who fund the ballot measure directly are campaign funders, which is needed to win, but there needs to be funding again for advocates who are going to be working on the implementation of that ballot measure, which likely leads to litigation. So that’s what we mean about before, during and after the win,” said Uribe.
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CGRE funds “early in the process, but we also fund early in the year” to help groups conduct research and polling and lay the groundwork for their campaigns, explained Executive Director Margaret Hempel.
The collaborative’s state court approach “is great, especially since our movement has relied so long on the courts to protect” abortion rights, said Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), which supports abortion patients and providers. The abortion rights movement never used to have its eye on the courts the way anti-abortion forces did, she said, making investment in state courts even more important. This includes enforcing successful ballot initiatives undoing existing anti-abortion state laws. “Oftentimes, you have to litigate to undo the bans. It’s not a light switch,” she said.
CGRE’s state court work, as important as it is, is still an almost literal drop in the bucket of overall spending on these races. In January 2024, State Court Report, a project of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, found that spending on the 2022 cycle of state judicial elections was almost double the amount of any prior midterm cycle, with $101 million spent across 17 states.
Douglas Keith, the author of that report and a founding editor of State Court Report, told IP that he thinks it’s likely that the 2023/2024 state court election cycle “was the most expensive ever,” particularly since it included the 2023 races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which were the most expensive and second-most expensive state court races in history, respectively. There’s clearly a lot of room to grow for funders looking to provide monetary ammunition for the state-level legal struggle.
Thinking creatively to help abortion patients, now and in the future
The other major pathway forward in support of abortion rights is providing funding to organizations that help women obtain abortions. Right after the Dobbs decision, NAF’s Fonteno said, “there was an outpouring of support” that allowed abortion access organizations to “really hold the line” and provide care, including helping patients travel to states where their right to an abortion is still respected.
But as successful as the ballot-initiative movement has been in rolling back abortion bans, in 2024, two new states, Florida and Iowa, initiated six-week bans. As of December 13, 13 states were enforcing total bans, 7 states banned abortion at or before 18 weeks’ gestation and 21 banned the procedure at some point after 18 weeks. Consequently, patient need has dramatically increased, Fonteno said, “and the funding that’s available just has not been able to keep pace.”
Despite the real threat to abortion rights nationwide created by Trump’s win and the GOP’s new federal government trifecta, Fonteno said, the sector received only a comparatively small post-election funding increase — “not anywhere near the bump that we saw after the Dobbs decision.”
In light of the ongoing, expanding need, Fonteno suggested that philanthropy start thinking creatively about how to get patients to the care they need. “Because there is an absence of the government stepping in on this public health crisis, I think it’s really important that we think holistically about what generous giving looks like,” she said. “Dollars are always welcome,” but nontraditional gifts like airline miles, vouchers for rideshare apps and other forms of travel assistance “can be really powerful and go a long way in getting people the care they need,” particularly as patients are now being forced to travel hundreds, or even thousands, of miles.
“This is the moment for businesses, for corporations, to really step up,” Fonteno said, including by helping their own employees travel to get abortions, if need be. “Now is really the time, through either corporate giving programs, in-kind donations, or just to vocalize their support again,” she said. “I think it’s going to take all of us coming together to make sure that people can continue to get the care they need.”
