I think this sub might be so low in membership and interaction because people who are not black haven’t realized they can womanists 🤔

A collective of Black women including activists, organizers, mothers, Atlantans and aunties held a rally yesterday at city hall to demand Mayor Andre Dickens drop the appeal in the 11th circuit court in order to advance the verification of 116,000 petition signatures that were collected last summer.

"Black women against cop city!" was chanted with banner representing those signatures collected and with the writing of Black women against cop city as a backdrop. Police angrily removed this banner along with another banner placed outside.

The mayor has consistently implied that there is a racial component to the stop Cop City movement and there is. The financial backers, capitalist and profiteers of the cop city project represent the white establishment. We know who the Atlanta Police Foundation is. Militarization and policing causes the greatest generational harm to Black and Brown communities while denying our communities essential resources such as affordable housing, health care, education, transportation and care.

And now Mayor Dickens is taking away our right to vote. The Mayor has used the courts as a stall tactic to disenfranchise Black voters and residents from voting on an issue we all care about.

“Black women will not be used by the democrats or republicans. Every election there is an expectation that we will mobilize our vote. To see this city, a so-called bastion of democracy in a red state, will go to any length to prevent us from voting on CopCity shows that Atlanta elected democrats only want democracy when it serves them, corporations or the Buckhead elite. To an untrained eye seeing Mayor Dickens cut ribbons all day is a sign of progress, but if he is willing to kill democracy and silence 116,000, we all should be weary of how even the slightest hint of authoritarianism shows up, even when it's laced in a ribbon, presented by a Black man with a decent hair-cut and smart talking points.” said Mary Hooks.

Source: Welaunee Coalition, Mary Hooks, Stop Cop City

How representative politics ignores Black women's well-being.
by Marty Nwachukwu February 7, 2024 Article

In 2020, when Kamala Harris became vice president-elect, and the first African American woman to reach the vice presidency, I was interviewed by the newspaper on my thoughts about the historical moment. For the first time in our nation's history, Black women would have "representation" in the White House. In my interview, I told the reporter that without centering on the political issues of Black women in America, Kamala Harris' win would be meaningless to their everyday lives.

Representative politics has failed Black Americans, and especially Black women. What "representation" has given us, is decades of electing people who look like us, or share our gender, into office who rubber stamp the unending targeting and oppression of our people and other people of color. African American women suffer from higher rates of gendered violence, job discrimination, and food insecurity and only a few people in government care about our issues.

Misogynoir, "[the] hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against Black women," is an endemic American problem that creates a quality of life crisis for African American women. We wither away as institutions and the people behind them create policies that assault Black liberties, while touting racially destructive stereotypes. As one of the most marginalized groups in America, representative politics has failed to protect Black women's mental health, healthcare, and wages. Black women are no longer tolerating our self-interests and political power being ignored.

For almost 60 years, Black women voters have shown up for the Democratic party and we have little material good to show for it. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, the Democratic party has relied on Black women voters as a reliable base. In 2020, African American women were lauded online for "saving America" when post-election polling was published. In that election, around 46 percent of white women voted for former President Trump, whereas almost 90 percent of Black women voted for President Biden (Chapin, 2020). The Biden and Harris re-election campaign are expecting African American women to hold the line this November. We are not a monolith, and they should not be so confident.

Black women are not going to "save" America this election year. We have to focus on saving ourselves, because we're tired of voting for the illusions of progress. The lack of political and economic security for African American women is making us reevaluate our relationships to academia, the workforce, and the two-party political system. For us, the personal is political, because our lives depend on it.

On Jan. 8, 2024, after months of disregarded complaints of alleged harassment at the hands of her university president, Dr. Antoinette Bailey, vice president at Lincoln University of Missouri (a historically Black university) took her own life. Just days before, Harvard University President Claudine Gay, Harvard's first African American female president, resigned from her position. Stories like these, family histories, and personal experiences inform the world view of young Black women like myself who are disenchanted by local and national policy choices because we see that even the most decorated of us can be assaulted and no one but ourselves will care.

Society's neglect of Black women's issues have deadly consequences, "CDC data show that Black women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, with most maternal deaths being preventable. The heightened risk spans all income and education levels" (Bervell, 2023). This dissonance of care causes mental distress in Black women and allows undetected medical issues to persist to the point of irreversible damage or death. If we lived in a society that took Black women's mortality rates and mental health seriously, women like Dr. Antoinette Bailey would still be alive today.

With the Biden administration seemingly ignoring the calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and underwhelming in their efforts to restore abortion care access and Affirmative Action, African American women are receiving the message that Democratic (and Republican) policy interests reflect an investment in maintaining America's racial capitalist caste system. A caste system where Black Americans sit at the bottom: "Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things" (Wilkerson, 2020).

All Americans are taught to observe, maintain, and protect the American racial caste system, and it starts when we're small children. A recent law study found that, "adults believe Black girls ages five to 19 need less nurturing, protection, support, and comfort than white girls of the same age, and that Black girls are more independent, know more about adult topics, and know more about sex than white girls" (Research Confirms that Black Girls Feel the Sting of Adultification Bias Identified in Earlier Georgetown Law Study, 2019). These racist notions follow Black girls all their lives from the classroom to the workroom.

America's unaddressed racist and genocidal roots show up everyday for African American women. For us the Civil Rights Movement never ended. "Median wages for Black women in the United States are $36,303 per year, compared to the median wages of $57,005 annually for White, non-Hispanic men. This amounts to the difference of $20,702 each year" (Heckstall, 2023). No matter how well-behaved we are, now matter what heights we raise ourselves to, Black women remain second-class citizens. The long existing wage gap is characteristic of our abandonment and tokenization. Instead of tangible material change and resources, African Americans are expected to be content with electing Democrats, or people who look like us regardless of party, into office while receiving no benefits. The era of representative politics, where African Americans tolerate the lack of substantive change and policies is ending.

For decades, neo-liberal politics have pivoted Black liberation efforts away from empowerment and mutual aid, towards identity politics and electoral cycles. Instead of addressing the economic and political wealth chasm caused by wealthy elites, politicians from both major parties focus public attention away from the profiteering of their corporate sponsors, toward the labels, or identities, of the people allegedly running this country into the ground. It is a farce in a country where anyone can be bought, to care if the person robbing you blind is white or Black.

African Americans recognize that representative politics is performative and does nothing to protect their livelihoods. Young Black women like myself are leaving the Democratic party, and as long as the racial wealth gap exists, our mental health crisis is ignored, and medical racism exacerbates our health problems, Black women will continue to look for ways to build ourselves and our community outside of white party politics, government, academia, and business institutions. We will not sit in quiet reverie this Black History Month. We will not indiscriminately give our votes away to any party or candidate, no matter their race or gender. This month, and for the rest of the year, we will be actively raising our voices and doing the work to uplift ourselves and our communities. It's time for a new way of doing politics, one that does not abandon Black women's well-being.

"The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman." — Malcolm X

Marty Nwachukwu is a community organizer and chapter director for Erie County United.

I'ma try this again. This is the one I had trouble posting earlier. I wrote this elsewhere a while ago and just sharing it here.

So there's a TikTok where a white woman is saying she is jealous of Black women and 'fears them' because 'they are strong, support each other, have themselves together, and support their community.'

Black women were all over that with response videos, happy to be acknowledged and feeling somewhat vindicated.

There's lots of white women on TikTok and YouTube praising Black women for our 'strength' and tenacity and it means nothing to me. I feel nothing for it but seething irritation. I don't see this as complimentary but tone deaf and shady. White women have white men propping up their community, providing for their community, making rules and laws that benefit their race and community, upholding and spreading their racial beauty and aesthetic, upholding and spreading global white supremacy. Why would white women have to take on the 'enviable' characteristics of 'strong Black women?' These are characteristics that Black women need to survive both racism and misogyny because Black men lack the power to do what white men do for white women, and Black men hate us for that.

Black women are tired of being 'strong' and tired of being the village mammy that everybody depends on and yet resent that they even exist. This is why Black women are preaching about not birthing kids (especially Black males) and 'resting in their femininity.' Black women don't get the luxury of femininity that's automatically bestowed upon white (and Asian) women from birth. Black women are hated from birth and felt sorry for because of the racist, sexist, and misogynistic struggle she'll endure in her entire life.

I don't need white women's jealousy and envy to feel vindicated or better about myself as a Black woman. They are a non-entity. I wish Black men felt this way about white men but Black men have a great need to continuously impress white men so they will acknowledge their humanity. Black men love when white men lack something that favors them (like athleticism and penis size). Do they know that white men use those metrics to say that Black men are subhuman and closer to animals than humans; to say that Black men have smaller brains and less intelligence because most of their evolutionary advantage went into the physical and sexual?

Black men know and choose to 'fight back' by being in interracial relationships and impregnating white women, something even the most simple minded male can do. But why not make white men a nonentity and stop caring. Live their lives and stop living to make white men feel jealous or inferior. White men will never feel jealous or inferior about a racial group they feel are beneath them. Same for white women. No white person would ever trade places with a group that's inferior to them no matter how jealous or envious they are of said group's features, characteristics, or abilities. White people will tell you they don't understand 'white privilege' but that's a lie. They know no matter how poor, broke, broken, and unattractive they are, being white is always an advantage for them. That is the definition of white privilege

Is it human nature that in order to feel good about yourself, you have to stand on someone else's neck? That in order to feel good about yourself, you need to be superior and someone else needs to be in an inferior position?

Yes, it's human nature but it's not my nature.

It's weirdly funny to hate something that you are, but people do it all the time. Now that I'm writing that, it would be a mental health problem, no?

Hating others for the same qualities you have, or for doing the same thing you do sounds contrary and self-hating. And it is.

But this is not that and I'm not that.

I lurk in areas I like to be in. It's usually something I like to do and want to do but haven't done it yet for whatever reason, like BLACK planting, fishing, farming, homesteading. Always with the requisite 'Black' when possible so when race is brought up everybody understands and nobody is uncomfortable and asking why race was brought into it. We are a unique people with unique problems that are often associated with race, I want to be in areas and spaces where I'm comfortable as a Black person and where those specific issues can be broached. I'm pretty active in all other groups I choose to be in.

Where you won't find me is lurking in groups about white people for white people, or in groups of men for men. I am not white or a man so why am I there? Yet white people and nonBlacks love to be in Black spaces and men love to be in women's spaces and they love getting the chance to tell you that they are there 🙄. Reddit is even more insidious because of the voting system and if those outsiders don't like what you have to say, you'll get a ton of downvotes from people that are not part of the community or the sub's targeted demographic. Those downvotes are discouraging and why many people are afraid to post a topic, especially topics that may be contentious. Smaller subs are overan by outsiders, and members of the sub who agree with you and support you with an upvote are not enough to balance the downvotes from outsiders.

And that's why I hate lurkers. They weren't really a problem on Facebook because they stayed in the dark. Here they are in the 'dark' but definitely making an unwanted and irritating presence. Racist whites and misogynistic men run rampant on Reddit, but Black groups, particularly Black female groups, are highly moderated and limited so they don't offend the larger dominant group of whites and men. This is not conformity, this is segregated control that plays out on social media and in real life.

Everything I say is contentious and I can't keep a dying or dead sub alive by actively posting there. I get tired and discourage by the downvotes too. My posts also draws unwanted followers. 15 fucking people follow me and not all of them follow me because they like and admire my postings 🙄. People love to follow folks they hate but who have the courage to speak. You know how many people I follow on Reddit? ONE. And that's just recently because he posted his beautiful poetic musings about life and despair in a subreddit I'm in. I went to his page and there was more there. I love a good writer, particularly one I understand and empathize with and that's why I decided to follow him on Reddit.

IDC what you say or how irritated you get, I don't have to like and accept everybody and I won't. The same goes for you. You spend too much time on the people you hate and dislike and not enough on the people who like and accept you - that's your problem and a mental health problem.

What do you think of the term 'radical feminist?'

Are you 'radical' with your womanism? Why or why not?

I've heard that to be a 'Black feminist/Womanist' automatically denotes being a radical. So... wouldn't inserting 'radical' be redundant? 🤷🏾‍♀️

I think it's another term made up by white folk (white women) for whatever reason and they stuck it to everybody. There's nothing in the Black femlit where anyone refers to themselves as 'radical feminists.' They are Black women, Black feminists, with perhaps 'radical' ideas. 'Radical' for who tho? Marginalized folks asking for respect, liberty, justice, equity and basic human rights is somehow 'radical' to the dominant culture. That's laughable and even a little condescending and offensive.

Also, does 'waves' of feminism apply to us? Seems like we been on the same 'wave' for ages trying to get the same shit we always been demanding.

I dont want to put down white feminism. Their privileged proximity to white men got a lot of shit done for them and women in general. I don't think Black women alone could garnered enough care from white men to get the right to vote, legalize birth control, and to have their own checking accounts and own land; but when white women were fighting for that, they were fighting for themselves to have parity with white men. We were fighting alone or besides Black men. Race before sex/gender was a necessity due the entire Black group being locked out.

If being a Womanist or Black Feminist is already 'radical' then I didn't need the additional term and prefer it NOT.

Two post in one. The other topic didnt post so I'll add it as a comment instead.

This is in response to a woman in the Blackmentalhealth sub feeling she's 'too sensitive' and 'cries easily' and failing at being a 'strong Black woman.' 🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️🕳️ 🕳️ 🕳️ 🕳️

Believe me when I say "strong Black women are not strong because we want to be, but because we have to be."

I'm strong and stoic and 'don't need nodamnbody' but inside I'm hypersensitive and easily hurt. I learned a long time ago nobody will comfort me, offer emotional support, gently caress my face and wipe my tears away while speaking softly and lovingly to me. No one ever has.

What really drove it home is when I tried to commit suicide several years ago. I wanted to slice my wrists and bleed out. I needed the physical pain to block out the emotional pain, but I am weak minded with a low pain tolerance. I was too scared to make one deep slice across my arm so I made a series of small shallow cuts thinking I could work my way up to that one deep cut. I couldn't, but those small cuts bled a lot. I laid on the couch and let the blood run down my hands and pool onto the floor. I waited for a loved one to come home and comfort me. I thought they would hurry to my aid, ask me what happened, hug me and tell me not to leave and don't do that again. This is the type of comfort I gave later to one of my children's friends, but this is not what I received. Instead my loved one came home, saw my physical distress and walked right pass me into the kitchen to get something to eat. I stayed on the couch a little longer then I finally got up and went to them. I put my blood stained arm up to their face and said "you see this? Do you see this?! But you completely ignored me, why?!"

Response "you still alive I see. You moving around. If it was that bad you would have called the ambulance."

That was it. I couldn't be vulnerable anymore. Nobody would have my back if I did. I refuse to cry around anyone. I did and I wasn't attended to so I don't cry. I refuse to cry alone to myself. I see it as useless and a weakness to cry. Instead I became angry and aggressive toward my loved one because of my repressed feelings and lack of emotional support. Black women not being attended to in our vulnerable and distressed state is probably why we became the 'angry Black woman.' We are mocked and demeaned for having the 'masculine' trait of being strong.

You don't want this type of strength. It will destroy you from the inside out. We carry a fragile heart ❤️ wrapped in stone 🪨 so nobody will undermine our weakness and vulnerability, but it's lonely and desolate and numb in here.

You don't need to be 'less sensitive.' You need your feelings and sensitivities affirmed and supported in a understanding, loving, and gentle way. That is what makes you strong, balanced, and mentally healthy. Your parents think they are preparing you for this cruel and unyielding world by making you hard, insensitive, repressed. They are not and that's a mistake.

When my daughter was two years old, I had one of the worse toothaches I could imagine. I took pain pills and topical analgesics to no relief. I was rocking and crying and I couldn't help it. My daughter saw my distress and came to sit next to me. She grabbed my arm and started crying and rocking with me. I was unnerved by this. I didn't want her to see me in such an agonized state and be thusly affected, yet it was one of a very few times I have ever felt loved and supported in my pain. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her, my tears falling on to her head. She's my most sensitive child and seems to cry the most of all my children. I let her cry. I encourage her to cry and share her feelings if she wants to speak. I listen intently and offer advice as needed. I hug her. I give my children the emotional support I wish I had and still need but nary get. They are strong and (more or less) emotionally balanced because of it.

The 'strong Black woman' is dead or hanging on by a string and nobody cares: https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sigmapb/works/woman.html

If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it - Zora Neale Hurston

I tried to make posts in this group and there seems to be limitations to what can be posted and said because my posts are not posted. The 'Rachel Dolenzal' post got flagged as 'NSFW' and apparently that not allowed. I tried to make another post and I don't understand why it wasn't posted. Maybe because of the use of 'dick' which could be considered obscene language? Or maybe it was because I mentioned how Black people are seen as subhuman and compared to animals which is language a racist might use so my post got tagged as racist?

I'll try to clean it up and repost but rules and posting etiquette need to stated so I can have a guideline for posting. Thanks.

Do you define yourself or does other people define who you are?

Do you accept the labels other people put on you? Why or why not?

Something to think about.

So I was trying to generate some activity in this sub, but I am not trans-friendly. The mention of it makes me think I don't belong here and maybe I don't.

I keeps to my own brand of Black feminism, so nobody can tell me that I am not that, but apparently I belong among Black Feminist 'TERFS' - a white people's term that they ironically threaten the safety of anyone they deem as that.

Mine are Audre Lorde (she's always #1) and the rest are in no particular order - Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, Octavia Butler.

How does womanism align with certain institutions like marriage and religion?

I consider myself a Black Feminist. Yes, the 'Black' part is important because without it, it gets relagated to whiteness (like everything on Reddit). I like the term 'womanism' for Black Feminism but it's not commonly used so I use the common term. I think they are interchangeable terms.

I do think being a Black Feminist is at odds with religion which is why I'm an atheist. Can you be religious and Womanist? I think so but it take a lot mental gymnastics or a reimagining of religion to do so. Same with marriage. I am married and it turned out to be more 'traditional' than I ever imagined or wanted. Marriage has it's benefits but I would never do this again.

What would you recommend I read. Both blog and book recommendations are welcome!

  OCTAVIA E. BUTLER was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. Born in Pasadena in 1947, she was raised by her mother and her grandmother. She was the author of several award-winning novels including PARABLE OF THE SOWER (1993), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS (1995) winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel published that year. She was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

  Though the MacArthur Grant made life easier in later years, she struggled for decades when her dystopian novels exploring themes of Black injustice, global warming, women’s rights and political disparity were, to say the least, not in commercial demand.

  During these years of obscurity Butler, always an early riser, woke at 2 a.m. every day to write, and then went to work as a telemarketer, potato chip inspector, and dishwasher, among other things.

  She passed away on February 24, 2006. At the time of her death, interest in her books was beginning to rise, and in recent years, sales of her books have increased enormously as the issues she addressed in her Afro-Futuristic, feminist novels and short fiction have only become more relevant.

  Her work is now taught in over 200 colleges and universities nationwide. The #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel adaptation of her book KINDRED, created by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, received the Eisner Award for best adaptation.

  In media, her novel DAWN is being developed for television by Ava DuVernay (“Selma”; “A Wrinkle In Time”). An opera by Toshi Reagon based on Butler’s novel PARABLE OF THE SOWER was part of The Public Theatre “Under the Radar” festival and toured worldwide in 2018. Amazon Studios and JuVee Productions (Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s production company) are developing a drama series from Butler’s PATTERNIST series, beginning with WILD SEED, and the series is being co-written by Nnedi Okorafor and Wanuri Kahiu, who will also direct.  

Awards and Recognition:

• 2018, Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium - Kindred, by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings (Abrams ComicArts)

• 2012, Solstice Award, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America

• 2010, Inductee Science Fiction Hall of Fame

• 2000, PEN American Center Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing

• 1999, Nebula Award for Best Novel – Parable of the Talents

• 1995, MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant

• 1985, Hugo Award for Best Novelette – Bloodchild

• 1985, Locus Award for Best Novelette – Bloodchild

• 1985, Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette – Bloodchild

• 1984, Hugo Award for Best Short Story – Speech Sounds

• 1984, Nebula Award for Best Novelette – Bloodchild

• 1980, Creative Arts Award, L.A. YWCA

Source: Octaviabutler.com

I'm writing a paper on how white supremacy, as a pervasive system of oppression, has inflicted generational trauma on Black African American people, sustaining deep-rooted psychological, social, and cultural wounds that resulted in the rise of violence toward Black women by black men as well as the system itself.

I'm trying to look for a story of a Black woman who was domestically abused and was failed by the system to cover. There are many of these stories (unfortunately) but I am looking for one that would cover the intersectionality of oppression experienced by Black women (racism, patriarchy, gender norms).

Any help would be Appreciated !

Do people post here. I hate the feminism reddit and would love to get this one started up again

There was no Red Wave. This was due to Black people. And not just Black people, but Black women. We carry the Democratic Party on our backs and they don’t even wipe our brow.

Find a stronger hustle. We broke our backs mobilizing voters. Election after election after election. Because we feel the pain of rights lost and stripped hard. And we scream into the ears of those who would deny our struggle and our pain, treating our grievances as little more than obstacles to their “progression,” and when they experience a piece of the loss we have always felt, they call on us to do more.

More.

As they watch non-Black women trend towards a party that has no problem telling you they are coming for your freedoms…they watched and they did nothing. Until it was too late and then they filled your social media screens with a fictional dystopian television show based on a fictional dystopian book that drew upon the real life narratives of our ppl. And expected us to understand the gravity of the state this nation is in as if we hadn’t found our tongue to speak these truths to power for generations.

This party is no good to us and yet we feel obligated to put ten toes down in stolen soil for them because alternative is far worse.

Red did not wave because Black did not waver. We gonna always hold strong, because this is what we have to do.

-Tiffany Hammond fidgets and fries

I'm in a lot of Anachro and Socialist spaces, and I ask that whatever your ideals are that you please register to vote. I know the system is flawed, but I'm also old enough to know that I won't live to systemic change - that doesn't prevent me for working toward it for future generations and the earth.

By Gabrielle Hays (PBS) Nation Jul 21, 2022 5:46 PM EDT

ST. LOUIS – An ordinance that taps federal funding to connect city residents with logistical help in accessing abortion services, as well as doula, postpartum and lactation support, was signed into law Thursday morning by city mayor Tishaura Jones.

“Today, St. Louis is taking decisive action, showing our state — and our entire country — we will not stop fighting to protect access to reproductive health care,” Jones said. “The Reproductive Equity Fund will empower St. Louisans to make the best health care decisions for themselves and their communities, while addressing the disparities exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis.”

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit against the city Thursday afternoon, calling the bill a violation of Missouri law.

“My Office today filed suit to put a stop to Mayor Jones and the City of St. Louis Board of Aldermen’s blatantly illegal move to spend Missourians’ hard-earned tax dollars on out-of-state abortions,” Schmitt said.

Missouri banned nearly all abortions, including in cases of [SA] or incest, on the same day as the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Some Missourians protested, some celebrated and others shifted their focus to how to help people seeking reproductive health care in a state where inducing one could be prosecuted as a class B felony.

That day, June 24, St. Louis Alderwoman Annie Rice also introduced her bill to use American Rescue Plan Act funds to launch a Reproductive Equity Fund in St. Louis, a move she said was a larger and “long-time effort that has been in the works” well before the fall of Roe.

“Abortion has been nearly inaccessible in Missouri for a very long time now and we’ve pretty much only had medication abortions provided at the St. Louis clinic and that was the last abortion clinic standing in the state,” she told the PBS NewsHour. That clinic, a Planned Parenthood on St. Louis’ Central West End, performed its last abortion the week before the Supreme Court released the Dobbs decision.

Since the procedure cannot be performed in Missouri, the new fund will direct $1 million of ARPA money toward logistical support for people seeking abortions, though the St. Louis City Health Department still needs to come up with a process for allocation. Another $500,000 will go to increasing accessibility for other reproductive services such as doulas – who help pregnant people through labor, delivery and postpartum recovery – and lactation support, that may help prevent maternal mortality or encourage successful breastfeeding. An additional $250,000 will be dedicated to evaluate and support the whole process. In total, the bill sets aside $1.75 million in federal coronavirus funds. It also sets aside another $1.6 million in funding for COVID-19 testing and vaccine incentives.

“We don’t have the same restrictions on the ARPA money that there is on other federal funding or on state funding, so why don’t we use this to try to get people the health care that they need?” she said.

Federal law prohibits federal dollars from being used to directly fund abortions, which the bill acknowledges.

However, the bill Rice introduced specifies that the $1 million should be used to help people with access by helping solely with logistical needs such as child care and transportation.

Nevertheless, the proposal saw some pushback from the moment it was introduced. In early July, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt released a statement saying that “using hard-earned taxpayer dollars, whether it be ARPA funds or other forms of revenue, to fund abortions is plainly illegal under Missouri law. St. Louis City and County, and Kansas City, and any others who attempt to authorize taxpayer-funded abortions will be met with a lawsuit from the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.”

Rice told the NewsHour that the board “thinks that the federal money that we are using can’t be restricted in the way that the attorney general thinks.”

The idea for the bill started with Pro-choice Missouri’s outreach work to learn more about barriers faced by people who can get pregnant, Rice said.

After conducting focus groups with locals, the group established four top priorities: logistical support for accessing abortion care; comprehensive doula care throughout pregnancy, abortion, pregnancy loss, birth and postpartum recovery; mental health care and resources; and lactation support, or establishing at breast and chest feeding in that postpartum period.

“Board Bill 61, I’m proud to say, was created by local birth workers and pregnant and parenting St. Louisans, who are empowered to advocate for what our community needs and deserves,” said Dr. Love Holt, a reproductive freedom organizer with Pro-Choice Missouri, in a press release the day the bill was signed. “When I think of the countless conversations I’ve had with people harmed by lack of access to abortions, and barriers to pregnancy care within the COVID-19 pandemic, I know this bill will have a direct and meaningful impact.”

Ensuring there is money available for support in states where abortion is now illegal is extremely important according to Megan Jeyifo, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund.For her and her team, the last two weeks have been “very busy, very exhausting.”

On the Friday after Roe fell, she said she sent her entire staff flowers.

“It affected us and coming face to face with all of the systems that are in place to stop someone from getting an abortion is really painful,” Jeyifo said.

Many people are turning to various reproductive health care organizations in Illinois for help with finding safe access to abortion. The Chicago Abortion Fund, which is funded by donations from both grassroots efforts and foundations, has been inundated with requests in the weeks since Roe’s overturn.

Outside of its direct services, the fund also engages in research and advocacy work, efforts that have picked up in the last few weeks. On average, they field 500 calls a month.

“The work is not new by any means, the scale is new and the costs are rising, you know, especially as it pertains to having to support more people traveling,” she said.

Though each person and their needs are different, Jeyifo said a person seeking an abortion in another state “can easily spend $1,500” so they work to help the meet those needs, whatever they may be.“We don’t have any means of testing or eligibility requirements, we support people with what they say they need,” she said.

In the first three months of 2022, more than 80 percent of the fund’s callers came from outside Illinois. It is for all of these reasons that funding resources, such as local abortion funds or local government efforts, matter, Jeyifo said.

“We need more investment at all levels of government to support people who are having to travel for health care,” she added. “No one should have to travel for health care. …no one should be criminalized for health care decisions but that’s the reality that we’re facing now.”

In Missouri, where abortion is effectively banned, except for cases where the person’s life is at risk, inducing an abortion can count as a Class B felony. People charged with a felony at this level can face a prison sentence of five to 15 years – a barrier, Jeyifo said, is harmful and will only lead to more bad outcomes.

“We have been having abortion since the beginning of time; we’re not going to stop having abortions. It’s just going to be harder to get them and even more dangerous to get them,” she said.

In recent months, several prosecutors across the country have vowed to not prosecute an individual seeking an abortion, including St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, a democrat, who signed a joint letter that ends with: “Criminalizing and prosecuting individuals who seek or provide abortion care makes a mockery of justice; prosecutors should not be part of that.”

Though the last clinic to perform abortions in Missouri can no longer perform those services, Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer for the Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, said the building will remain open to ensure that people still have access to its other services.

“It’s great to see smaller local governments and elected officials doing the work that the state level hasn’t done whether that’s St. Louis City and Mayor Jones or the county that has also said that it would put dollars behind this work,” she said. “Basic access to healthcare has to involve everybody.”