Vice-President Kamala Harris issued a stinging rebuke to the “hypocrisy” of conservatives in a speech delivered on the anniversary of the overturning of Roe v Wade, in which she pointed out that conservatives continuously seek to restrict access to health care. “How dare they?” she demanded.
There are reasons for her charges. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently published a study showing that the number of women aged 18-30 choosing to undergo tubal ligation has increased dramatically since Roe was overturned. The rate of vasectomies has also increased, but only at half the rate of tubal ligations. It appears that, in the age of shrinking space for abortion rights, women are now much more fearful about their own bodily autonomy.
At the same time, The Guardian estimated that 65,000 rape victims could not seek an abortion in their home state should they become pregnant, due to restrictions on abortion passed by a number of states. While there is broad consensus that such exemptions should be available, anti-choice activists are exercising a great deal of influence over these choices which can make or break a woman’s life.
These developments come at a time when more conservative politicians feel emboldened to reveal their true objectives. Clarence Thomas has said he believes Griswold v Connecticut, which allowed legal access to contraception, was improperly decided. There was a story that several Republican senators have floated the idea of outlawing No-Fault Divorce.
With all this going on, it’s a good time to listen to Margaret Hempel, Executive Director of the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity (CGRE).
Q: Tell us more about CGRE! Beyond the broad focus on collaboration and your vision of equity, what are your top priorities right now, with reproductive and abortion rights under attack?
A: CGRE is a community of committed, generous foundations and individual funders who, through a pooled fund, support advocacy and nonprofit leaders on the frontlines defending equity every day. We work with funders who believe in a future where everyone — regardless of gender, nationality, economic status, or zip code — can thrive.
Our goal has always been to go where we are needed most, centering our grantee partners. In the last two years, Americans have faced unprecedented attacks on their fundamental rights and their ability to access abortion care. During that time we’ve continued to listen carefully to advocates who are still serving their communities, even as they grapple with these attacks, whether they are based in a state with an abortion ban or not.
Their insights, along with analysis from our seasoned staff and other experts in the field, have identified several areas where philanthropic funding will yield the greatest positive change: advancing equity through state judicial systems, funding efforts aimed at state power-building, and building new alliances across different groups. And across all of these areas, we prioritize providing general operating support for our grantee partners. We believe this approach offers the greatest promise to advance — not just defend — gender, reproductive, and racial equity.
Q: How does CGRE help individual funders to align disparate goals and strategies for equity? Beyond pooling resources, does CGRE play a role in setting priorities and/or directing funds?
A: While each of our funders have their own portfolios and strategies outside of CGRE, they all share a commitment to advancing gender, reproductive, and racial equity and an understanding that we can do more together. Each of them comes to this work with varying levels of familiarity with the field — we create spaces where they can have honest dialogue with each other about their core and shared values while hearing from field experts and grantee partners on what is needed most.
Our strategy is informed by conversation, evaluation, and learning from our trusted relationships with grantee partners, leaders on CGRE’s staff, and our funders. Our staff is diverse, skilled, and strategic,. They work closely with other funder and field networks, peers, and non-grantees to identify new grantee partners and build our strategy, coupled with the expertise of in-state advisors, research, and data analysis.
Q: CGRE publicly notes its efforts to ‘break down silos’ in the movement for reproductive rights and equity. How does that focus relate to your Capacity Strengthening Initiative?
A: Historically, generations of advocates have pushed to expand equity in all forms — including abortion access, voting, and civil rights. Their work has been essential to strengthening our multiracial democracy. But at the same time, this activism has often excluded LGBTQ+ and racial justice movement leaders. Similarly, philanthropy hasn’t done enough to back solutions created by frontline community leaders. Women — particularly BIPOC and LGBTQ+ women — have known for a long time that gender, reproductive, and racial equity are intertwined and that solutions that address those forms of equity as fundamentally connected do more to create an inclusive world.
Despite the fact that the communities most affected by inequities are the ones with the experience and blueprints for the solutions, the historical under-resourcing of these groups has put them at a disadvantage and they often haven’t been able to develop the internal systems to the extent that they deserve. That’s where our capacity-building work comes in. We partner with LeadersTrust to strengthen advocates’ organizational capacity and leadership development because we believe that investing in individuals and organizations is foundational to developing strong movements and healthy ecosystems of care and action.
Q: CGRE partners with LeadersTrust to execute its Capacity Strengthening Initiative. Who is involved in that work, and what sort of process do you follow to reach decisions?
A: LeadersTrust is a fantastic partner for this work, helping us to build organizational and individual capacity and leadership development of our grantee partners, especially those led by BIPOC, transgender, and gender nonconforming individuals.
We offer these flexible, opt-in resources to our grantee partners over extended periods of time, avoiding rigid project requirements that place an unnecessary burden on groups already dealing with attacks on equity so that they can focus on their core work, whether that’s service provision or advocacy.
Through LeadersTrust, we help each organization build their capacity and meet their needs for anything from bolstering cybersecurity or improving their accounting systems to providing opportunities for rest and recharging, or assessing and intentionally shifting organizational culture. This flexibility allows advocates to pivot as needed, which is crucial when you live in a place where abortion bans or other extremist policies could change at a moment’s notice.
In terms of the process, it’s a straightforward application. Applicants then work with LeadersTrust to build out a plan that’s tailored to them. We also offer all grantees access to LeadersTrust’s webinars and other resources that align with their needs.
Q: Tell us a little bit about the main facets of your approach — especially the state power-building efforts and your judicial work.
A: Everything we do at CGRE is in service of the same goal: to advance and defend our rights.
At the state level, we ensure advocates have the resources they need to defend against attacks on equity and advance solutions. Too often, investments for state-level equity initiatives are limited to short-term and reactionary stopgaps in response to isolated attacks on rights. Those approaches can’t sustain momentum for long-term change by themselves. For example, we provided multi-year support to state-based groups that were instrumental in defeating pregnancy criminalization efforts in Georgia, establishing a new full-spectrum health center in southern New Mexico, and expanding postpartum Medicaid and parental leave in Texas.
Our judicial strategy is made up of multi-year grants that support organizations and leaders working to develop new pathways for advancing gender, reproductive, and racial equity through the power of state courts. We’ve worked in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other states to help ensure state courts can serve as strong and fair safeguards for reproductive rights and gender equity, and reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. With the federal judiciary now dominated by judges hostile to gender, reproductive, and racial equity, this work has taken on even greater urgency, since advocates can no longer rely on federal courts to advance legal protections or stop harmful laws.
Our state power-building and judicial work is complemented by our Alliance Table strategy, which works to protect and expand the visible majority that supports these rights. This includes support for efforts to connect advocates working across issue areas that have too long been isolated from each other to a robust effort focused on expanding majority support among diverse constituencies including men and boys and faith communities, as examples. And our Opportunity Fund allows us to quickly move funds in response to urgent threats as they come up, sometimes in as little as 48 hours.
Q: Finally, the overturn of Roe and the assault on reproductive rights is a huge issue. What do you see as your major strategy in this fight for reproductive rights? Some conservative politicians have started to backtrack on their anti-choice rhetoric. Is that just a ploy for the upcoming election? Or do you see, or feel that maybe the draconian laws have started to turn the tide as voters say “This has gone too far”?
A: The end of Roe was devastating, but it didn’t come as a shock to those who had been following the attacks on reproductive rights for years. We had been hearing from folks in the movement that this could happen, and we prepared and bolstered resources in anticipation of this long before 2022.
At this time, funders of reproductive rights must continue to provide robust funding for advocates to respond to the latest changes in policy or rhetoric, while also resourcing proactive efforts to advance rights. Since the fall of Roe, it feels like there’s a new lawsuit or legislative attack against abortion rights every week. Of course, advocates need resources to act quickly to respond and protect their communities. But that alone cannot be the sum of our efforts. That’s why we prioritize multi-year, unrestricted funding, to help our partners plan for the future, build new alliances, and proactively counter attacks by the opposition.
With an election coming, it’s no surprise that historically anti-abortion politicians are starting to backtrack on their rhetoric and muddy the waters on their past actions to restrict rights. They would prefer not to pay a political price for these decisions, especially as Americans’ broad support for fundamental rights remains so consistent. There is clearly a disjuncture between the laws and policies promoted by many elected officials and the opinions and priorities of the communities they purport to represent.
