“Can I See Hope for Us Here In Alabama?”

A guest post from WAWC Healthcare’s Robin Marty in Tuscaloosa

Note from Andrea: This is a guest post from WAWC Healthcare’s Robin Marty, a longtime colleague and friend (and great follow over on Bluesky). WAWC provided abortion care in Alabama until Roe was overturned. In the two years since, they’ve fought to keep their doors open and continued providing an everything-but-abortion spectrum of repro care, including prenatal exams, contraception, PrEP, gender affirming care, and miscarriage management. But now, WAWC is facing an urgent budget crisis: they need to raise $100,000 to continue serving patients until January, when grant funding will kick in. This is a common consequence of abortion bans, which don’t only shutter abortion clinics but often threaten the entire repro care landscape for other services, especially in underserved and rural areas, because abortion providers are health care providers. Because abortion is health care.

I’m deeply moved by WAWC’s commitment to their community. I donated $25 this morning, and I encourage HWTA readers who are able to do so, too. If that’s all you need to hear, click here to fund essential WAWC’s repro care in the South.

WAWC Healthcare staff, photo courtesy of Robin Marty

Will change matter if we aren’t there to see it?

By Robin Marty, executive director, WAWC Healthcare
Originally published on the WAWC newsletter

Like so many of you all, I’ve been watching the Democratic National Convention all week, feeling the joy that has been pouring out of Chicago and wondering if maybe things could actually be different in the future.

But my biggest fear right now is that whatever happens this election, those who need help the most down here will never get it.

Last week I talked to a reporter from the New York Times who asked me how a Harris/Walz win could affect us here in the Deep South (and especially my clinic and the patients it serves). My answer wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear: There is a very strong possibility that regardless of political wins or losses, our patients won’t see any change in their healthcare. I told the reporter what I hope to see, but also that even if federal law creates better health access, Alabama could just as easily opt out of any future programs, just like they attempted with Obamacare, voting rights, cruelty in the prison system and on and on.

The article closed on my admittedly depressing forecast for 2025:

“Everything is meaningless. It does not matter what is happening at a federal level,” she said. “It’s difficult to see it being any different regardless of who is in the White House.”

Can I see hope for us here in Alabama? Maybe – at least more so than I have since I arrived four years ago. But we’ve fought so hard to ensure people get care regardless of race, gender, sexuality, income, insurance status or documentation, that we may not have the resources to see what that future holds.

In the 26 months that we have been offering accessible maternal and reproductive healthcare post Dobbs, we have provided more than $1.5 million in uncompensated care. And unfortunately that is finally catching up with us. While we have new grants that will come through in January of 2025, we will run out of operating capital sometime this October, forcing us to stop all appointments for at least two months until that check comes and we can start again.

To fill that gap I need to raise $100,000 and it can only happen with your donation. It is too late for any new grant to get us money in time, and our patients pay an average of $25 per appointment. Even seeing more than 100 patients a month, that’s not even enough to cover our monthly birth control supplies.

I know people are invested in elections, in ballot initiatives, in fixing reproductive rights at a governmental level and I get that, and it is so needed. But we have needs down here, too, needs that are unlikely to be met by any administration, and definitely not in time to make sure there is no interruption in our prenatal care appointments, our birth control, HIV and PrEP prescriptions, or other ongoing services our patients only have us to rely on.

If every one of you who reads this sends just $25 one time, this gap would be covered and we could continue booking appointments with no concerns about canceling down the road. For just the same amount as an average out of pocket charge for an appointment, we can be sure we won’t need to turn anyone away.

Please help us close our $100,000 deficit so we can make it to the future, too?

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