The Blue Ridge Abortion Fund provides resources to Virginians and people traveling into Virginia for abortions. They've seen an increase in out-of-state clients in the last three years. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi spoke with their executive director and filed this report.
The Blue Ridge Abortion Fund, based in Charlottesville, has helped people access abortion in Virginia since 1989. They provide free financial support for abortion appointments and related needs such as transportation, lodging, childcare, and medications. Executive Director April Greene said they've seen more out-of-state clients since the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned the federal right to abortion.
APRIL GREENE: Right now, about 25% of the people we are supporting are traveling into Virginia from out of state, and that is an increase in this post-Dobbs period. Pre-Dobbs, and in the early days of the Dobbs decision, when states were still enacting bans or figuring out what kinds of bans they could enact, those out-of-state numbers were closer to about 15%.
Virginia, which allows abortion until the start of the third trimester of pregnancy, is the only southern state that has not restricted or banned abortion in the last three years.
GREENE: Virginia really is sort of holding the line for the South. … As more and more bans and restrictions have proliferated, especially in the South and the southeastern U.S., we've seen a really big influx on the number of people coming in from out of state … from states like North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee – those are the biggest states we're seeing folks come in from. But we do get folks from Alabama. We get folks from West Virginia and Kentucky.
This corresponds with an overall increase in demand for their financial assistance.
GREENE: We have a set budget for the amount of funding that we are able to provide to folks each week. … We accept calls on our funding line. Once a week our line is open, and we accept calls for new funding requests on that line until we hit that point of, "okay, we're at our threshold for what our $20,000 weekly budget can support." … We can support between 40 and 60 callers each week with the $20,000 that we budget. We're hitting that number so early – our phone line opens at 9 o'clock. Some weeks we are having to close the phone line at 10 o'clock because we've already received the number of calls that we can support.
Back in February, the General Assembly passed a resolution to amend the Virginia Constitution to include "the fundamental right to reproductive freedom." Only Democratic legislators voted in its favor. As the ACLU reported, the amendment must pass the General Assembly again in 2026 before it would go to the voters in a referendum.
GREENE: We still have a little ways to go, but are feeling very optimistic that that's something we can help make happen, and really recognizing that in the pre-Dobbs years, there was a lot of work being done in Virginia, too, to strengthen reproductive rights.
Greene, representing a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, couldn't comment on the candidates for the House of Delegates or the governorship.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears has said previously, to different news outlets, that she would support both a 15-week ban and a "Heartbeat Bill" like the one in Texas. That bans abortion after the detection of fetal cardiac, or electrical, activity, which usually occurs around six weeks after the start of one's last menstrual cycle. The Democratic candidate, Abigail Spanberger, has pledged to protect reproductive healthcare.
GREENE: What I can say is that we will be here, right? We know no matter what, whatever happens in November, whatever that election looks like, whatever comes out of this, we have been here for a really long time. Blue Ridge Abortion Fund has been here for 36 years, through a lot of different political and social landscapes. I think the most challenging has been the last few years, trying to navigate the post-Dobbs world, and we've been able to continue showing up.
If the General Assembly passes the constitutional amendment again during its next session, the question of inscribing abortion rights in Virginia's constitution could be on the ballot next November.
