The feminist care work in abortion funds
Ophra Leyser-Whalen1, Briana Trejo1, Kari White2
1Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University Ave., El Paso, TX, 79968, USA.
None:
We contribute to the research on care work and emotion work through a focus on abortion fund workers in an abortion restrictive landscape. We utilize interview data collected from 23 abortion fund staff and volunteers serving Texans after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and a subsequent Texas Executive Order that suspended abortion care for 30 days. We find that abortion restrictions led to increased workloads for abortion fund workers and more desperate situations for callers, which then necessitated fund workers to provide intensive emotional support to callers. This led some volunteers to experience burnt out, and staff described strategies to mitigate burnout, including delving into a community of care model for the workplace. These findings add to the literature on abortion funds, and on human services workers and emotion and care work, which is particularly timely in the current post-Dobbs landscape where abortion fund staff and volunteers are facing similar and new challenges.
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