DENVER – One month after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Cobalt, an organization that works to increase access to abortion procedures is sharing data showing an increase in requests for abortion help in Colorado.
The Cobalt Abortion Fund helps women pay for the procedure and provides financial assistance for travel to Colorado, childcare, and hotel rooms.
Since June 24th, Cobalt reported the fund has helped 168 women with expenses related to receiving an abortion in Colorado.
The organization reports that 64% of its clients are from Texas, 31% are from other states, and 5% are from Colorado.
“I think many of our patients are traveling from Texas, just based on the proximity of the state to Colorado and access to flights in and out,” Colorado OB-GYB Dr. Nancy Fang said. “I've testified about a patient of mine who broke her water very early in the pregnancy, a pregnancy that could not have continued on to a normal delivery. This was not only devastating and heartbreaking to her and her family, but she risked her life needing to travel outside of her home state and institution to seek an abortion.”
Fang said out-of-state women who are seeking abortions in Colorado are often responsible for making their own travel arrangements.
“We've had patients fly, we've had patients drive, you know, it's not uncommon that I hear a patient say she just arrived on a flight and came straight to the clinic, or they were just in the car for 15 hours and arrived straight at the clinic without sleeping all night,” Fang said.
According to Cobalt, abortion providers started seeing an increase in patients from Texas in 2021 when Texas passed the Heartbeat Act, prohibiting abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.