March Moneygrubbin: Help a woman in need.

More than half of the women who have abortions in this country already have kids.

A whole bunch of women don't have the money either to have more kids or to have an abortion. Hell, a lot of 'em don't even have money for birth control (or bus fare to get to the Planned Parenthood in the next town that has free condoms, but which closes at three o'clock during the week).

Texas Equal Access is a fund that provides small grants--from fifty to a hundred bucks--directly to clinics that perform abortions, with the agreement that that money will go toward reducing the cost of a woman's abortion. It's only given after the woman in question has had a pregnancy terminated, so it's not like the clinics are rolling in money. Said women also have to satisfy certain conditions to demonstrate financial need.

(Side note: if you do a real-terms comparison of what it cost to get an abortion in 1980, when the only clinic in my county opened, and the cost in 1999, when it closed, then you'd see exactly zero profit. This is the norm for abortion providers in this country, the majority of whom are small, independent practitioners, who do reproductive health work as a sideline.)

There may be no worse feeling in the world than sitting at work, waiting for a call from your partner, hoping that he's been able to get the money you need out of the bank or from friends or relatives, because neither of you have a credit card. The woman whose partner isn't able to find the cash will be helped by your donation, so she won't have to shout "FUCK" across her workplace when it looks like she'll be pregnant for another two weeks, and go to a different clinic, and have a different, more involved procedure, to get rid of a pregnancy she'd tried to prevent and never wanted in the first place.

It's ridiculous that women have to go through this to obtain a safe, legal medical procedure.

Help a woman. Being pregnant when you don't want to be is like being an animal in a trap; chewing your own leg off is an understandable and reasonable reaction.