How Volunteers Open Their Homes to Women Seeking Abortions

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/15/realestate/abortion-volunteer-homes.html

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The woman arrived at Jill’s Chicago apartment at around 10 at night. Her bus had been delayed for hours, and she was exhausted and nauseated, clutching a plastic bag with a container of Jell-O and a Powerade.

These were the things Jill knew about the woman: her first name, her phone number and that someone would pick her up in the morning and drive her to a nearby clinic for an abortion.

For the next two nights, the woman hunkered down in Jill’s spare bedroom, a small, sparsely decorated space with a daybed with a blue-and-white floral comforter, exposed brick walls and windows overlooking a neighbor’s deck. Jill spent much of the visit second-guessing her hosting choices: Had she done enough to make her guest comfortable? Perhaps she should have thought to have anti-nausea medicine on hand, or crackers. Maybe she could have offered the woman her own bedroom, with an en suite bathroom.

“It’s awkward as you might think it would be, having a total stranger stay in your home,” said Jill, who asked to use only her first name out of concern that abortion opponents might harass her. “I just felt for her.”

For decades, nonprofits, often tiny groups existing on shoestring budgets, have been paying for airfare, taxis, babysitters, meals and lodging to help women get to clinics. They mostly turn to hotels for lodging for the women who need the financial assistance and some hand-holding to navigate state and federal rules that complicate abortion access. But the Midwest Access Coalition in Chicago and the Haven Coalition in New York are two organizations that have long used a different model: home.

The Supreme Court decision that struck down Roe v. Wade cast a light on a longtime practice, as several states banned abortion and others continue to move to dismantle abortion rights. Home stays have roots in a pre-Roe America, where women frequently traveled long distances for abortions, often relying on clandestine groups for help. Once abortion was legalized, those whisper networks disappeared, and formalized nonprofit organizations took up the work.

In the days after the decision, abortion-rights activists made coded offers of housing, suggesting on social media platforms that abortion seekers “come camping” or “kayaking” in their state. Some longtime activists bristled at offers that they saw as misguided and potentially dangerous virtue signaling from people who were not in any real position to open their homes to strangers at a moment when people needed accurate and useful information.

The Midwest Access Coalition in Chicago and the Haven Coalition in New York have spent years building out a network of vetted volunteers that they can call upon at a moment’s notice. The Supreme Court decision and its ripple effect have increased demand. In the month of July 2020, the Chicago organization served 40 clients, mostly from Indiana. This July, they served 200, with most traveling from Indiana and Texas.

People seeking abortions are now traveling greater distances, in increasingly difficult circumstances. Many are arriving at clinics later in their pregnancies, leading to longer procedures. Others are forced to travel out-of-state to pick up the pills for medication abortions, turning a 15-minute trip to the pharmacy into a two-day odyssey.

“It’s been a long journey to get to this really bad place,” said Jill, 44, who spent much of her career working at women’s centers on college campuses, and is a Midwest Access Coalition volunteer.

At Midwest Access Coalition, prospective volunteers first fill out a questionnaire, then go through a criminal-background check, followed by a three-hour training session and finally a home visit. Once they are cleared, they communicate over a Signal group text thread, responding to requests as they come in: A mother and her daughter need a place to stay for a few nights. A woman is bleeding at Midway Airport; can someone pick her up?

“Chicago is extremely expensive to get a hotel in. It’s like $300 or $400 a night,” said Diana Parker-Kafka, the executive director of Midwest Access Coalition, the only volunteer host program in Chicago.

But it’s not just a question of dollars and cents. Traveling far from home, to an unfamiliar city, can be disorienting in the best of circumstances. A hotel may offer privacy, but it can also be lonely and isolating. In the midst of an exhausting experience, a home host can offer a hot cup of tea, a plush comforter and conversation.

“It very much felt like going to visit a friend, but a friend I had never met before,” said Giovanna Achebe, who, in February 2020, spent two nights with her husband in a Midwest Access Coalition volunteer’s Chicago apartment when she needed an abortion.

The two-bedroom apartment was cozy, full of books on the shelves and art on the walls. “The whole place had a vibe that you could pull one of the books off the shelf and curl up,” said Ms. Achebe, 38, a labor organizer. “It was very homey.”

Twenty weeks into her pregnancy, Ms. Achebe, who lives with her husband and 14-year-old son in Rockford, Ill., was told her baby had severe fetal abnormalities. For Ms. Achebe, the decision to terminate a wanted pregnancy was fraught, and the procedure emotionally traumatic and complicated. Added to that, no hospitals in her area provided abortions, so she had to drive two hours to Chicago, leaving her son with his grandparents. The host was warm and friendly, she said, but also gave her and her husband space. One night, they watched Bill Maher together. “For something that is so traumatic, you would think that being in a stranger’s house would be terrifying, but it was kind of the opposite,” she said, adding, “It ended up being affirming. When something really bad happens, there’s always someone who will help.”

After the Supreme Court decision, the requests on the Midwest Access Coalition Signal thread were coming in daily, said Henrietta Dombrovskaya, 59, who was trained to be a host in 2019. Inside her Chicago apartment, an airy prewar two-bedroom, built-in bookshelves by the fireplace display dolls from her childhood in St. Petersburg, Russia. The guest room, with a private bathroom, is the apartment’s larger bedroom. The room, with both a platform Queen bed and a sleeper chair, is large enough to accommodate two adults, which is helpful for guests who may be traveling with a companion. Aside from two small needle works on the wall, the room is sparse with a dresser, a wooden chair and a portable coat rack where guests can hang their clothes.

“You need to earn the trust, it’s not granted,” she said of her role as a volunteer. “If you need me or want to talk, I’m here. If you want to stay in your room, please stay in your room.”

Some nonprofits immediately shut down after the Supreme Court ruling, fearing prosecution for aiding and abetting what is now a crime in states that ban the procedure. But the legal landscape is murky. There are no state laws directly banning a person from leaving a state for abortion care, but interstate travel is not enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. Earlier this year, Missouri proposed legislation that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helped a state resident obtain an abortion out of state, including people who helped transport them. How the courts would rule on such cases is an open question.

“We’re kind of in uncharted territory in terms of what states will do and whether courts will tolerate it,” said Melissa Murray, a professor of law at New York University and a co-host of the “Strict Scrutiny” podcast.

Mrs. Parker-Kafka of the Midwest Access Coalition has her own doubts about the role home stays should play in abortion access. Before the coronavirus pandemic, she relied heavily on volunteer hosts for her Chicago clients. But the program shut down for two years because of the pandemic and people seeking abortions through the network stayed in hotels, instead. When the program resumed last spring, Mrs. Parker-Kafka, 39, began to rethink how she wanted to use it, given the demographics of her volunteers and the people seeking assistance with abortions.

Most of people who come to the coalition have limited income, and about 70 percent are people of color, predominantly Black women. By contrast, about 90 percent of the volunteers are white. They are often older and retired, living in the city’s wealthier, and whiter, neighborhoods. “They don’t know what the lives are like of our clients,” said Mrs. Parker-Kafka.

The training program includes a session on racial sensitivity, but Mrs. Parker-Kafka, who is Black and Indigenous, worries it’s not enough. “I try to think, ‘What if I was going through this care?’” she said. “I would want complete privacy to be myself and be well rested and do whatever I need to do to feel comfortable, and that’s really hard to do when you’re a guest in someone’s home.”

In its new iteration, home stays now account for only five percent of organization’s lodging. Most nonprofits avoid placing people in other people’s homes entirely. Simply offering someone a private bedroom or a sofa instead of a hotel room could send a disrespectful message.

“I never want our clients to feel like, ‘Oh, we have this option that’s free for us, or we have an option that’s $200, which one do you want to choose?’” said Gina Martínez Valentín, executive director of the Colorado Doula Project, which provides logistical support for people accessing abortions.

Yet, there is no shortage of willing and eager volunteers. On the day of the Supreme Court ruling, the Haven Coalition in New York received a call every minute to its hotline from people wanting to volunteer. Its waiting list now numbers over 200.

Being a host means being prepared for the unexpected, with menstrual pads, snacks and extra toiletries on hand. Sometimes people never arrive; other times there are only hours to prepare. Once, Karen Duda, the coordinator for the Haven Coalition , hosted a woman and her cousin who’d traveled to New York from Florida in the late fall. They arrived in shorts and sandals. She took them to a discount store and bought them cold weather gear.

“People are worried about a lot of stuff when they’re having an abortion and they’re away from home,” she said. “This is just a little less for them to worry about.”

Haven Coalition, which was founded in 2001, has no paid staff and no budget. Volunteers pay for their guests’ subway and bus fare and their meals. Some of the volunteers have been with the organization for years, others drop in and out. A few are in their 70s and 80s; most are in their 30s and 40s. Prospective volunteers fill out a questionnaire, are interviewed in person, have a home visit and provide personal references, like work colleagues or longtime friends. The organization also assists local New Yorkers who need someone to help them get home after an abortion.

In Chicago, Sue, who is 68 and a retired special education teacher, has spent the past few months getting the lower floor of her 1920s Chicago bungalow ready. As she walked downstairs, she wondered if she should move a “Biden/Harris” sign at the bottom of the staircase. The baby pictures of her daughter, who is now grown, that were on the walls, too. “I don’t want anything that would be triggering,” said Sue, who requested we use only her first name out of concern that abortion opponents might protest in front of her home.

Sitting in her living room, Sue recalled her own abortions, the first in her 20s, and the second in her 40s, after she’d already had her daughter.

If a complication arises, she said, she can offer quick and discreet support, in a way that a hotel concierge could not. “I just want them to have a safe abortion,” she said. “And be OK.”