President’s Message
Dear Friends,
The fall of Roe is a visceral, collective blow to us all. I write you today as if my very life depends on it, as we wait in delicate balance for the Kansas constitutional amendment vote on August 2, 2022.
Since the SCOTUS decision, the Kansas Abortion Fund has been bombarded with requests—not just for abortion care—but from Kansans who simply want to help. These requests have given us hope in a time when so many people are feeling despair by SCOTUS’s callous dismantling of reproductive rights that will irreparably harm thousands of people. KAF has heard from Kansans, such as a grandmother who wants to offer her small guest room to a pregnant woman who needs lodging and wrote, “we don’t have much money, but we can offer a room and a few meals.” Or from others, like a couple who cannot provide monetary funds but offered other precious resources, noting we have “great driving skills to provide people with transportation to their abortion.” We have received email after email from volunteers ready to care for strangers they have never met, to help ease the financial, emotional, and logistical burden for those struggling to access abortion care.
As a small group of volunteers, KAF has never been able to provide practical support (transportation, lodging, childcare) for people in need of abortion care due to a lack of organizational infrastructure and resources. However, in response to these times, KAF is challenging what we are capable of and redefining our capacity to help. In other words, we are working on it.
Today is not the time to allow anger or sadness to immobilize us. Let it motivate us! We are staying focused on funding abortion care. Our social media presence has grown massively. We are connecting with our neighboring abortion funds in other states and strategizing with the National Network of Abortion Funds. We ask you all to stay strong. Stay vigilant. And never acquiesce to the antiabortion zealots who think they will bring us down.
-Sandy Brown
President, Kansas Abortion Fund
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Just The Pill Announces Launch of Mobile Abortion Clinics
“Just The Pill stands ready to care for an increased number of people seeking abortion now that access to abortion in many states has been eliminated with the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. We are currently seeing patients in Colorado, Minnesota, Montana and Wyoming. Our two mobile clinics began serving patients in June. By operating at the border of states with abortion bans, we can reduce travel burdens and make abortion more accessible. We are prepared at the Kansas and Oklahoma border and are currently fund raisng for our next clinic in the midwest. We are determined to bring care to the people who most need it!”
—Brooke Bailey, Executive Director
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Protect Reproductive Rights in Kansas:
Vote NO on the Amendment August 2, 2022
In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state’s constitution protected a right to an abortion. The first section of the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights states, “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The Court found that “this right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life – decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy” (emphasis added).
Antiabortion activists and supporters are trying to take away a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her body and family, by changing the Kansas Constitution during the August 2, 2022, primary election, using a strategy that has worked well for them for more than a decade. In 2010, anti-abortion groups began strategically targeting primary elections in Kansas because voter turnout is low, and highly mobilized anti-abortion supporters can have an oversized impact on the outcome. They have successfully used this strategy for the past decade to elect ideological extremists to the Kansas legislature.
However, most Kansans (60%) do NOT support banning abortion, but their voices have been silenced by the extremist political culture in Kansas. One antiabortion group has spent $1.3 million in Kansas; antiabortion billboards are posted throughout the state and television ads have been running to implore people to support their antiabortion amendment, misleadingly dubbed the “Value Them Both” amendment.
Keeping abortion legal in Kansas is crucial. It is one of the only states in the Midwest where abortion has the potential to remain legal and provide abortion care to Kansans and people in other states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri where it has been criminalized. Several other states bordering Kansas are poised to criminalize abortion.
Please remind your friends and family to vote NO on the amendment in the primary election to protect reproductive rights in Kansas. Do NOT change the Kansas Constitution.
There is still time to register to vote! The deadline to register to vote in Kansas is Tuesday, July 12th. You can register in person, by mail, and online.
If you will be out of town on election day, you can vote by mail. The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Wednesday, July 27th.
· If you drop off your mail-in ballot in person, you must return it by Tuesday, August 2, 2022.
· If you MAIL your ballot, it must be postmarked by Tuesday, August 2nd, and it must be received by Friday, August 5th.
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Looking for Vote NO signage and bumper stickers? Reach out to your local Democrat Headquarters, Planned Parenthood, or look for them being distributed at local marches & protests. Pick up some for your friends! Commit to being a neighborhood distribution spot for signs and bumper stickers. Reach out to your local Democrat Headquarters to find out about phone banking and going door-to-door to encourage folks to VOTE NO ON AUGUST 2. |
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Self-Managed Abortion With Medication is
Safe and Accessible
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Though the illegitimate Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, one huge advantage in the fight for reproductive rights is the availability, and safety, of medication abortion. Today, approximately half of all abortions are performed with medication, which can be taken at home. Medication abortion is safe to use up to 12 weeks of pregnancy and has a high efficacy rate. Abortion with a combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol is 96.7% effective, while abortion with misoprostol only is about 85% effective in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. All forms of abortion with pills have extremely low rates of complications and are effective no matter your weight or size.
In December of 2021, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) made the mailing of abortion medication directly to patients’ homes completely legal across the entire United States. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday, June 24, 2022, that in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, states cannot ban mifepristone. That has not stopped individual states to try to prevent their state residents from receiving the medication, and many of those fights are currently going on in the courts.
Currently both Kansas and Missouri prohibit abortion pills being prescribed by a doctor through telemedicine and sent through the mail. Abortion medication can be accessed in-person by making an appointment with an abortion provider. It is important to note that Kansas and Missouri do not criminalize patients who order abortion medication themselves, and there are now several websites through which the public can access abortion medication. Go to https://abortionpillinfo.org/ for help acquiring birth control and abortion pills. The websites https://www.medside24.com/ and https://aidaccess.org/ both offer safe abortion medication that can be mailed to you.
For more information about self-managed abortions, check out www.reprolegalhelpline.org/sma-faq/, or Doctors Without Borders offers a helpful video tutorial on self-managed abortion on YouTube. If you have legal questions about self-managed abortion, check out https://www.reprolegalhelpline.org/sma-know-your-rights/.
It is important to remember medication abortion is indistinguishable from miscarriage. The exact same hormones are involved, and no medical person will be able to tell the difference between a “natural” miscarriage and a medication-induced miscarriage. If you or someone you know needs to visit a hospital after using abortion medication, there is absolutely no need tell the hospital you took medication as the symptoms and treatment are identical.
Women and trans men across the United States have the power to manage their own abortions in this era of reduced reproductive rights.
-Kansas Abortion Fund
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KAF president Sandy Brown speaks at the June 4, 2022 Reproductive Rights rally in Lawrence. |
Lynne Greene, Sandy Brown, Sylvie Rueff and Amber Fraley at the
KAF table.
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