These remarks were delivered as part of Mishkan’s 2025 Repro Shabbat service on February 21st. You can listen to excerpts from this sermon on Contact Chai podcast or watch on Mishkan’s YouTube channel.
****
My name is Alicia Hurtado, and I am here today on behalf of the Chicago Abortion Fund, or CAF. For those of you who may not know of us, CAF is Illinois’ statewide abortion fund – providing financial, logistical, and emotional support to hundreds of people each week who are facing barriers to abortion care. This looks like coordinating funding to fill appointment cost gaps, booking travel via plane/train/bus, providing direct assistance for gas money, childcare, contraceptives, and other needs.
Nobody should have to navigate arduous financial and logistical barriers to access abortion care, nobody should have to leave their community for common healthcare, and nobody should have to weigh decisions about affording basic necessities for themselves and their families against affording healthcare to shape their future.
The reality is, that people, primarily across the South and Midwest, are relying on Illinois to access the abortion care they want, need and deserve – in fact, Illinois has fielded the highest increase in abortions post Dobbs nationwide, higher than the increases seen by the next two states combined. Last year alone, CAF fielded over 16,000 support requests from people based in 40 states across the country, and distributed over $5 million to directly meet the needs of our callers.
Illinois did not become a national access point by accident. This is a culmination of years of work by abortion funders, clinics, elected officials, and advocates to shore up our ability to protect and provide reproductive healthcare.
At CAF, we are working every day to ensure that the protections that we, our supporters, our elected officials, and our partners have built are not only accessible to those who have the means to afford it. Since 2019, we have not had to turn away anyone relying on Illinois for abortion care – regardless of who they are where they are from, or the resources they have. That means the mom and her daughter flying to Illinois from Texas to pick up abortion pills, the CPS high school student who is on her parent’s insurance and doesn’t know where to go for care, the family that just moved to Illinois and can’t afford to raise another child right now, the nursing student who is just about to finish her degree and can’t believe she has to travel out of her home state of Indiana for healthcare. At CAF, I’ve supported people older than me, younger than me, students, teachers, parents, and grandparents; I’ve helped many people from my home state of Texas, and even one that was born in the town I grew up in. Abortion is common, essential healthcare – and we support people from all walks of life who just can’t afford to overcome the myriad of barriers that exist to care across the country.
Reproductive justice defines the human right to have children, to not have children, and to parent the children we do have in safe and sustainable communities. Abortion is absolutely essential in the fight to achieving reproductive justice – as a means for people to control their bodies and futures, and to make decisions around taking care of their health, achieving their dreams, and creating a sustainable environment for the children they do have. This is a family issue, an economic justice issue, a racial justice issue – and it is a community responsibility as we work together to meet the need created by the devastating damage that anti-abortion justices and elected officials have dealt to the abortion ecosystem, while we fight for a long-term fix.
I want to close these with a note of gratitude, especially in a political moment like this. I am so grateful to be here for Repro Shabbat, for the fact that a Repro Shabbat exists – and also grateful for the longstanding support the Jewish community has shown for reproductive rights and abortion access.
Now more than ever, it is critical to resource on-the-ground support organizations, to bust abortion stigma by openly and candidly talking about abortion, and to gather together in spaces that move us towards action instead of despair. I hope that you all will join us – whether it is more directly as monthly sustainers of our work, or participants in our upcoming Fund-A-Thon campaign to mobilize your communities to support abortion access, OR if it is standing alongside us as public, unapologetic abortion access supporters. Our power, together, is needed more than ever to ensure that people can overcome barriers to abortion and get the care they need. Thank you.