Packing Party on May 24 2026

Collecting Comfort Items: We will be collecting comfort items for Emergency Medical Assistance! We will bundle these into travel kits for women leaving the state to obtain reproductive health care at a packing party on May 24th.

Please start collecting:

$25 Visa cards OR donate the equivalent HERE! Click the big DONATE button on the upper right of the screen.

Comb

Maxi Pads

Heating pad

Non caffeinated tea

A nice note/card

A journal

Motion sickness meds

Ginger candy

Tooth brush

Travel sizes of

Hand sanitizer
Tooth paste
Lotion
Wet wipes
Ibuprofen

Because of Florida’s near-total abortion ban, more people are having to travel to Baltimore, Maryland; Washington D.C., and New York for care.

Jessica Hatem, executive director of Emergency Medical Assistance (EMA), an abortion fund in Palm Beach County, Florida, says ... the journey can be very intimidating to some people, and traveling to places like Illinois during colder months adds additional factors while planning.

“Even though travel can still be a lot to navigate from a southern state to another southern state, I think sometimes it feels even more intimidating if you’ve never left your community before to go to the north. Especially when we’ve had people navigate this through the winter and people in the deep south don’t necessarily have coats or you know, proper winter attire. So it’s going to be a big hit,” Hatem told Reckon.

According to Planned Parenthood, a medicated abortion can cost up to $800, but averages around $580. Abortion travel increases the overall cost of accessing care, as additional costs such as childcare, lodging, and gas, need to be considered. Before Roe was overturned, Chicago Abortion Fund paid an average of $120 per person in wraparound costs to support travel, lodging, childcare, pan medication, and more. In 2023 the price reached $400, with 40% of people they served needing wraparound support, according to Business Insider.

Most Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency expense, according to Bloomberg. This is where abortion funds come in, providing money, answering questions, and connecting out-of-towners to clinics in places where they can legally access the care they need. The community of people who work for or volunteer with abortion funds is very interconnected, as the work requires people who live in different states to communicate and coordinate with each other.

Emergency Medical Assistance

Last year, 1 in every 3 abortions in the South happened in Florida, with over 9,000 abortion seekers traveling from other states, according to Guttmacher Institute. Though the six-week ban has tightened the timeline for getting an abortion, Florida abortion funds have infrastructure already in place to assist people who need to travel.

Jessica Hatem, executive director of EMA says that collaborating with fellow funds is essential to making abortion travel happen for those forced to flee to neighboring states like Illinois and Washington, D.C. She said that though North Carolina is the closest state for patients to access care, EMA primarily serves people with low-income or no income, who often cannot afford to work around the state’s mandatory waiting period.

“It’s kind of a misconception about people going to North Carolina which technically is physically the closest to Florida, and they’re 12 weeks, but since they have a 72 hour in-person waiting period, that’s not feasible for most people because it’s a full three days of being in North Carolina without your procedure,” said Hatem.

EMA and many other abortion funds, don’t solely provide money for abortion procedures or pills, but supply payment for all of the hidden aspects of traveling for abortion like flights, hotels, rideshares and food, as well as offer support on how to navigate travel.

“Much like it can be someone’s first time flying, it can also be someone’s first time using an Uber or Lyft, as well, so sometimes all of this is new [to them]. And it’s not just simply paying for these things, which we do, but it’s also the logistics behind walking them through that process, being available to them while they travel if they have questions, all of that.” said Hatem.

Hatem says as more unnecessary blockers are put in place, the work of abortion funds is becoming even more crucial, because they are often the only groups filling these gaps in care and sexual health resources.

“People’s needs are becoming increasingly unmet, the circumstances are becoming increasingly hostile, and we’re the ones that are able to step up and assist people as these systems around us continue to fail,” said Hatem. “We also do a lot of the most radical work within our communities, even the funds that are still operating in full ban states are providing some amount of sex education because again, there’s not good information out there about reproductive health care as a whole.”

(Original reporting by Annabel Rocha)

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