How CREDO funding is helping Planned Parenthood Action Fund fiercely fight for abortion rights

Note from CREDO: In January 2022, CREDO members voted to distribute $55,235 to Planned Parenthood Action Fund to help the organization continue the fight for reproductive freedom and health care access. In total, CREDO is extremely proud to have donated $3.7 million to Planned Parenthood, its Action Fund and affiliates since 1996. Please take a moment to read this incredible update from the organization about how it utilized funding from CREDO to preserve and expand access to reproductive care.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund is pleased to share an update on work CREDO has helped to make possible over the past six months. 

This reporting period has been a time of grave challenges for reproductive health and rights: The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has eliminated the federally protected right to abortion and opened the floodgates for as many as 26 states to move to ban abortion. A total of 36 million women — nearly half of the women of reproductive age (18-49) in the United States — and more people who can become pregnant — will likely lose abortion access within a matter of weeks or months, if they haven’t already. Communities that already face the greatest barriers to care will be harmed the most. While we are devastated, we are also resilient, better equipped and more determined than ever before. The Action Fund will never stop fighting to ensure every person has the care they need to control their bodies and build their futures.

As we approached the Supreme Court decision, the need to galvanize Planned Parenthood supporters around the existential threat to abortion access became increasingly urgent. The leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion provided further impetus. Working in close collaboration with coalition partners, Planned Parenthood organizations participated in a national Bans Off Our Bodies Day of Action on May 14 that drew more than one million supporters to the streets. In the 24 hours following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24, Planned Parenthood organizations mobilized tens of thousands of supporters across the country. More than 550 coalition events were held nationwide, including more than 80 hosted by Planned Parenthood organizations.

Earlier in this reporting period, we mounted a fierce fight to preserve and expand access as many states rushed to pass abortion bans in anticipation of the then-pending Jackson Women’s Health decision. The Action Fund worked at a furious pace to provide local Planned Parenthood advocacy and political organizations with the critical organizing, communications, lobbying, and policy guidance they needed to defend and expand access. We used these fights to further garner public awareness of how our rights were gravely threatened.

Planned Parenthood advocacy and political organizations scored important defensive victories despite the hostile climate. For example:

• In February pro–reproductive health legislators in Virginia defeated a measure that would have banned abortion in Virginia after 20 weeks of pregnancy and subjected providers to potential felony charges for violating the law.
• Several abortion restrictions were defeated in Iowa, including a medication abortion restriction bill, a trigger ban, and 12-week ban, which all failed to meet a procedural deadline and earn a final vote.

In more supportive states, Planned Parenthood advocacy and political organizations have successfully advocated for the following measures to expand abortion access:

• The Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act in New Jersey, a historic law that includes protections for abortion, birth control, and pregnancy care;
• Repeal of Illinois’s parental consent requirement, removing the final abortion restriction on the books in a state that became critical to abortion access since the fall of Roe;
• Colorado’s Reproductive Health Equity Act, which codifies the protections established by Roe into state law; and
• A California bill eliminating out-of-pocket costs for abortion patients covered by private health insurance plans.

Also during this period, Planned Parenthood Action Fund worked to promote a bold, proactive federal policy agenda and ensure that the Biden-Harris administration prioritized sexual and reproductive health care. We have been in close communication with the administration about the abortion access crisis since Texas’s six-week abortion ban went into effect in September 2021. As we got closer to a ruling in Jackson Women’s Health, the administration used its bully pulpit to shape the national conversation around the chaos and harm of overturning Roe. Examples include Vice President Harris’s virtual roundtable with abortion providers — including doctors from Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and SW Missouri and Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast — and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s testimony at a Senate hearing about how banning abortion would be “very damaging” for the economy.

The Planned Parenthood Action Fund is rallying the overwhelming majority in this country — the 80% who support legal abortion — while working with local Planned Parenthood advocacy and political organizations to fiercely defend against restrictions in strategically selected states. We are also providing support to expand access wherever possible, while prioritizing those states where gains will increase access for people living in adjacent, more restrictive jurisdictions.

As part of the Bans Off Our Bodies campaign, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Planned Parenthood local organizations are organizing millions of advocates around the country to demonstrate widespread momentum for abortion rights. In July we launched a “Summer of Dissent,” a mass mobilization that harnesses the outrage of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision into a movement-defining state of action. This includes hundreds of events; volunteer phone banking and social media outreach; a corporate day of action; and actions by Planned Parenthood Black, Latino, and patient organizing programs.

Additionally, we are pressing the Biden-Harris administration and Congress to do all in their power to safeguard abortion access. In the immediate aftermath of the court’s ruling, the Action Fund and our coalition partners have been working with the administration to implement emergency and longer-term measures, including those in the Executive Order (EO) signed by President Biden in early July. The EO takes a vital step toward protecting and defending access to abortion care in a post-Roe reality.

CREDO has been a staunch corporate partner throughout this crisis — showing up time and again to voice support for abortion access leading up to and in the wake of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Planned Parenthood Action Fund is deeply grateful for CREDO’s incredible partnership and unwavering commitment to reproductive rights. Thank you for standing with us at this pivotal moment.