Fresh off win on same-sex marriage, Sen. Tammy Baldwin proposes federal travel fund for women seeking abortions
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A bill introduced Thursday by Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin seeks to establish a four-year, $350 million annual government grant program that would help support women in Wisconsin and across the country who have to travel long distances to get an abortion.
The bill would allow non-profit and community-based organizations to apply for federal funding that can go toward the cost of travel, lodging, child care, translation services, meals and other logistical support associated with obtaining abortion services.
In Wisconsin — where the overturning of Roe v. Wade effectively reverted the state to an 1849 state law that bans all abortions except when they are necessary to save the life of the mother — such grants would connect women, especially those from marginalized and low-income backgrounds, to abortion care.
The grants could also be used to support doula care and patient education and information services on abortion. The money could not be used to pay for abortion procedures themselves.
The bill, which is co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), comes during Congress's post-election lame duck session, after which legislation that does not become law will expire and have to be reintroduced when the next two-year session starts. At that point, a Republican-controlled House of Representatives will make the chance of Baldwin's bill becoming law less likely.
The senator admitted Wednesday that the chance of the abortion bill passing this session — realistically, by being added on as an amendment to a large package of bills that has yet to be passed this year — was "slim."
However, Baldwin is just coming off of a major legislative win, having spearheaded the successful passage of same-sex marriage legislation in the Senate, clearing the way for it to become law. And many Republicans blame part of their poorer-than-expected showing in midterm elections on the popularity and power of abortion rights.
Another version of the bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Marilyn Strickland, a Democrat from Washington, in July. Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan is a co-sponsor. The bill has not made any progress toward becoming law.
But Baldwin said her secondary motivation for introducing the legislation is to raise awareness about the broad array of challenges that people in Wisconsin and other states with abortion bans have faced since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
"(Wisconsin's abortion ban) means if you have a need for comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion care, a woman in Wisconsin has to leave the state, and that can have enormous, enormous impact," Baldwin said. "This bill recognizes that impact by creating reproductive health travel fund to help ease the burden that women of Wisconsin and other states in similar situations face."
Data from Wisconsin's oldest and largest abortion fund — the Women's Medical Fund Wisconsin — indicates a steady increase in demand for such financial assistance. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, the fund started providing funding not just to pay for abortion procedures, but also for the various costs patients might incur while traveling to get them.
"Even when abortion was federally protected, Wisconsin residents were needing to travel hours, spending nights in hotels and taking time off work, because there were so few abortion clinics in the state already," said Lucy Marshall, board president of Women’s Medical Fund Wisconsin. "It's really important that our elected officials and our government are supporting Wisconsin residents in being able to realistically achieve and access the care that they need."
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, before Roe was overturned, one in 10 people nationwide who got abortions traveled across state lines to get it. The institute separately found 59% of women who get an abortion already have at least one child and just under half live below the federal poverty line.
More:Senate passes Tammy Baldwin-led same-sex marriage legislation, clearing way for bill to become law
Wisconsin's four abortion clinics stopped providing abortions as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court made its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center in June. Some pivoted to provide other reproductive health services. One shuttered entirely.
As a result, more women in Wisconsin face large increases in the distance they have to travel to get an abortion.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison estimated in an August report that patients in 42 of the state's 72 counties would see the distance they have to travel to get an abortion increase by an average of 82 miles, one-way. In Milwaukee and Dane counties, which accounted for 56% of the state's abortions before the Dobbs decision, residents would have to travel 70 and 120 more miles to reach an abortion clinic, respectively. In the state's 30 other counties, the distance to an abortion clinic didn't change because they were already closest to an out-of-state clinic.
Across the border in Illinois, Planned Parenthood clinics reported a tenfold increase in the number of Wisconsin patients seeking abortion services in the weeks following the Dobbs decision.
Dr. Allie Linton, an OB-GYN and the associate medical director of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said the non-profit has hired two new patient navigators whose only job is to help people access abortions in other states. In Milwaukee, they've seen seen the greatest need for Uber rides or train rides to clinics in Illinois, Linton said.
The closest abortion clinic to Milwaukee is in Waukegan, Illinois, which is not easily accessed by public transportation. Linton also is seeing more patients traveling these far distances alone, without the traditional support people they'd bring when the clinic was in town.
Having seen that, Linton said she particularly supports that the bill would allow for the grants to fund doula services. Doulas support and help pregnant people advocate for themselves.
"To have someone whose sole purpose is just to be there and support them I think is really powerful," Linton said.
Baldwin said she has heard "heartbreaking" stories from Wisconsin women since abortion was banned. She said the story of one woman — whose water broke at 18 weeks, before the point her pregnancy was viable — will stay with her forever. The woman was unable to get a full range of options until she began to spike a fever.
Dr. Kristin Lyerly, a Wisconsin OB-GYN and a regional legislative chair for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said she supports the legislation. She's seen cases like the one Baldwin describes in her own practice. Before the Dobbs decision, Lyerly was an abortion provider in Sheboygan.
She said she thinks of how the patients she served there would have fared under the current abortion ban: women who came in with friends because their partners wanted to keep them pregnant so that they could control them; women who came in struggling to support the kids they already had, knowing they couldn't afford the larger car or house, or the day care they'd need if they had one more.
"I wonder what is happening to these people now," said Lyerly, who now only practices in Minnesota because of the Wisconsin ban. "It hasn't gone away. I'm just not seeing them."
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin proposes federal fund for abortion travel
