(Colorado Newsline) The Cobalt Abortion Fund is on track to spend over $2 million this year to support people seeking abortion care, the most in a year by far since the U.S. Supreme Court decision that reversed Roe v. Wade.

In a press conference Thursday announcing data from the first quarter of 2024, leaders with Cobalt highlighted how much more they are continuing to spend to help people access abortion care since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling in June 2022, which overturned the federal right to abortion and returned the matter to the states. Currently, 14 states have total abortion bans.

Image

Cobalt is a Colorado-based nonprofit that advances reproductive rights, and the affiliated Cobalt Action Fund provides direct financial assistance for people seeking abortion care. The organization provides funding through two categories: procedure funding, which helps secure appointments and other methods to get procedures done, and practical support, which helps with basic needs to access abortion, such as travel and lodging expenses.

Melisa Hidalgo-Cuellar, director of the Cobalt Abortion Fund, said the organization spent $502,591 in the first quarter of 2024 to support over 1,000 clients. Cobalt predicts that by the end of the year it will spend close to $2.5 million.

In 2021, Cobalt spent $212,565 for the entire year to support people seeking abortion care. In 2022, the year the Dobbs decision came out, the organization spent $737,174. In 2023, the first full year post-Dobbs, Cobalt spent $1.3 million.

“I think that sometimes there is this idea that the Dobbs decision and subsequent bans due to trigger bans created an increase in volume and now maybe that volume has kind of decreased or kind of stabilized,” Hidalgo-Cuellar said. “That is not the case. The case that we’re seeing out of Cobalt Abortion Fund is that the volumes continue to increase every single month, and that’s really reflected between the 2022 numbers and the 2023 numbers.”

While Cobalt is based in Colorado, its abortion fund started to support people who live in states that limited or banned access to abortion after the Dobbs decision, as more people from those states need to travel if they need abortion care. Access has been particularly restricted in Texas, where Senate Bill 8 effectively bans abortion after the detection of fetal cardiac activity. So far this year, 41 percent of the clients Cobalt provided procedural funding for are Colorado residents, while 25 percent have been Texas residents. For practical support, 85 percent of the clients it helped so far this year were from Texas.

Karen Middleton, president of Cobalt, said the organization is committed to every request it receives for financial support. She said abortion bans in other states have led to “a breakdown in the full spectrum of reproductive health care access across the country,” which makes it harder for patients and providers.

“Our abortion fund is bearing the brunt of having to hear from more people who have no other options and no other place to go,” Middleton said.

Hidalgo-Cuellar said this year is the first time the fund has spent more on practical support than procedure funding, because more people need to leave their home states and travel longer distances to access abortion care. She said that spending drastically increased after Texas approved Senate Bill 8, which took effect in 2021.

Since Florida’s six-week abortion ban went into effect at the start of May, Hidalgo-Cuellar said Cobalt has already received requests from people in Florida trying to access abortion care in a state where it is legal. She said Cobalt only expects to get busier this year: Arizona will also temporarily have an abortion ban in effect this summer, and a Supreme Court ruling on the Food and Drug Administration approval of abortion medication mifepristone is expected to come in June.

Hidalgo-Cuellar and Middleton both emphasized the importance of Colorado’s actions to protect abortion care, including the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which codified the right to abortion access in state statute, and a shield law to protect patients who travel to Colorado from out of state.

Middleton said she is confident Cobalt will be able to raise enough funds to fulfill the needs it anticipates seeing throughout the rest of the year.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.