Chicago Abortion Fund Executive Director Megan Jeyifo Gives U.S. Senate Testimony in Honor of Dobbs Anniversary
Chicago Abortion Fund Executive Director Megan Jeyifo Gives U.S. Senate Testimony in Honor of Dobbs Anniversary
Jeyifo spoke at the invitation of Senator Patty Murray on the role of abortion funds since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022
CHICAGO, IL– June 23, 2026 – Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF) Executive Director Megan Jeyifo appeared today before members of the Senate Democratic Caucus to commemorate the four-year anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Jeyifo, who spoke at the invitation of Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), runs the largest independent abortion fund in the United States.
The spotlight forum, Post Dobbs Chaos: Republicans’ War on Reproductive Health Care, highlighted the ripple effect of post-Dobbs abortion bans on care networks across the country and the ongoing attacks on abortion care. Since June of 2022, CAF has served over 60,000 callers and distributed over $25 million in direct support to abortion seekers from over 40 states. More on CAF’s impact since the Dobbs decision can be found here.
“Abortion funds are on the frontlines of the post-Dobbs chaos,” says Poonam Dreyfus-Pai, Interim Executive Director at the National Network of Abortion Funds. “Requests for support have doubled since Roe was overturned, and the cost of each abortion has also surged. These conditions created by extreme anti-abortion bans and policies have pushed abortion access out of reach for many, but abortion funds such as the Chicago Abortion Fund are doing everything they can to bridge the gap. Now is the time for us to unequivocally show up for abortion funds, just as they do every day for abortion seekers.”
The following are remarks as provided to the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus:
Good afternoon, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Megan Jeyifo, I use she/her pronouns, and I am the Executive Director of the Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF), Illinois’s statewide abortion fund and a member of the National Network of Abortion Funds. We are the largest independent abortion fund in the country.
Although I am now CAF’s Executive Director, I began my work with the fund as a volunteer case manager. The story I am about to share reflects the experiences of so many of the people we support.
The caller was a woman from Kentucky, a state with a total abortion ban. She called CAF from her car, parked outside a crisis pregnancy center in Indiana, another state with a total abortion ban. Over the phone, the center had led her to believe they could provide abortion care, so she had driven there alone, hoping to get help.
Instead, she found herself sitting in a parking lot miles from the care she needed. She was scared, frustrated, and unsure of where to go next. Every day mattered. She had already taken time off work, spent money on gas, and arranged childcare. And now she was learning that the appointment she thought would provide care had never been care at all.
Within minutes on the phone, we had a plan. We supported her with gas money home, gave her a childcare stipend for her babysitter, made an appointment at a legitimate clinic for the following day, and booked her a flight to Chicago, where she was able to get the care she wanted, with dignity and compassion.
Every month, we hear from hundreds of people facing impossible choices because of abortion bans, financial hardship, and a healthcare system that is increasingly difficult to navigate. About 75% of our callers are already parenting, 80% live in states with abortion bans or severe restrictions, and all face barriers to obtaining the care they want, need, and deserve.
That’s where the Chicago Abortion Fund steps in. Our individual case management system is a model for abortion access across the US in the post Dobbs era. We support abortion seekers at every stage on their path to get an abortion by paying for appointments at independent clinics, Planned Parenthoods, telehealth providers, and hospitals, and by providing complete wraparound support for their needs. In the first three months of 2026, we did that for nearly 5,000 patients.
Since June 2022, we have helped more than 60,000 people access abortion care and provided over $25 million in direct support. We have spent countless hours on the phone with callers from more than 40 states, helping them piece together a path to their abortion when politicians interfered with their decision-making.
Data released this month by the We Count study confirms what we already know: abortions have not declined since Dobbs. In fact, they have increased. In part, that’s because the people who can no longer get an abortion in their home state are coming to Illinois.
In 2025, 142,000 people crossed state lines to get an abortion. 142,000 people had to leave their home state to get a common, essential, life affirming, and sometimes life saving medical procedure. 1 in 4 of those travelers came to Illinois, making us by far the highest receiving state in the nation. Nearly half of those traveling to Illinois for their abortion received support from CAF.
What CAF is seeing is reflected in the most recent national funding data from the National Network of Abortion Funds. Across the country, the cost of care and support continues to surge. The total spent on abortion funding has tripled since Dobbs, from just over $16 million to more than $48 million. Every day, we hear from people trying to make thoughtful decisions about whether to start or grow their families while navigating rising costs, unstable housing, inadequate childcare, and shrinking social safety nets. Recent federal and state policy decisions shape those realities. For many of the people we serve, the decision to have an abortion is inseparable from the economic conditions in which they are raising children and planning their futures.
Four years into a new post-Roe era, I cannot pretend things are not sometimes very dark. When we spent a weekend just last month wondering whether access to medication abortion through telehealth and the mail might be dramatically curtailed for millions of people across the country, that was hard. And we know that fight—and others like it—are still coming.
But this fight is not new, and I know my responsibility within it. The Chicago Abortion Fund was started over 40 years ago. Many of the women who built this movement have told me they never imagined their children and grandchildren would come of age with fewer abortion rights than the ones they themselves fought to secure. But I also draw strength from where I live and where I do this work. Chicago is the home of the Jane Collective, the underground network that helped thousands of people access abortions before Roe. It is also the birthplace of the reproductive justice movement, created by 12 Black women in 1994 who challenged the reproductive health and rights movement to imagine something bigger than legality alone: a world where every person has the power, resources, and support to make decisions about their bodies, their families, and their future.
These legacies remind me that we come from a long line of women who have never confused legality with justice, and who have never stopped showing up for one another when the stakes were high. That is what abortion funds do every single day.
I have had the privilege of speaking with and learning from thousands of people seeking abortion care. Over and over again, I hear the same thing: "You changed the course of my life." I understand exactly what they mean. I had an abortion when I was 16 years old. If I had not been able to access that care, I do not know if I would be the mother of amazing twin preteens today. I do not know if I would be sitting before the Senate discussing my life's work. That abortion changed the course of my life.
And after four years of Dobbs, I know that the ability to have an abortion continues to change the course of countless lives every single day. We have an incredible support system in Illinois at the state, county, and city level, but we still need funding and support to keep doing this work. That's why we need bills like the Reproductive Health Travel Fund Act and the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act. Together, these bills would support the critical work of abortion funds and ensure that no one is criminalized for obtaining or helping someone to get their abortions.
Even as abortion access is no longer the issue of the moment, even when things feel too far gone, even when it drops out of the minds of donors and politicians, remember the abortion funds and providers doing the work on the ground, day after day. We’re still here four years in, and we’re not going anywhere.
Thank you.