Abusive men are stopping their partners from accessing abortions.
We are often the only place they can turn. People living with abuse can be isolated from friends and family, have limited access to finances or a phone, and abusive partners sometimes monitor their movements and when they leave the house. If you need to travel for an abortion, living with domestic abuse can make this even more difficult.
But for every one man stopping someone access an abortion, there are hundreds of people waiting to help her get there.
We hear from at least one person a week who can’t access an abortion where they live, and who face the additional barrier of domestic abuse.
Like Lina*, whose partner cancelled her appointment and took her phone and access to money away so she couldn’t organise a new one until it was too late to get an abortion in Germany.
“It is very important for me to be able to undergo this procedure so that I can stabilise my life, find safe housing, and have the opportunity to start over. It takes a great deal of courage for me to write this, but I currently see no other way forward.“
Thankfully, she was able to get a burner phone and reach us again. Our volunteers helped co-ordinate her travel to a new appointment, and cover some of the costs so she didn’t need to worry where she would get the money from.
Supporting people living with abuse is more challenging. It can take longer to organise, pushing clinic costs up. People don’t always know it’s going to be possible to travel until the last minute, so flights and accommodation can be more expensive, too. And people who are isolated by abusive partners might not have anyone else they can ask to borrow money from to cover the costs.
All of these things mean an already difficult and expensive journey can cost even more money. The average grant for someone living with abuse who needs to travel for an abortion is £930.
We need to raise £10,000 by 16th October to help cover the additional support people like Lina need, who had to navigate misogyny and control from both the law, and her boyfriend, when she needed an abortion.
Thank you.
*The details in this story are true, but we have combined two recent stories, and changed their names, to protect their privacy as much as possible.
