The private pilots flying abortion seekers across the Midwest

In the fall of 2022, Mike climbed into the pilot's seat with an idea.

For the past few months, the private pilot had been volunteering with the Illinois-based Midwest Access Coalition, an abortion support fund that he'd come across in his post-George Floyd anti-racism journey.

"I thought, there's gotta be people out there helping people travel for abortions, because it's not like every medical facility you go to provides abortion care," says Mike. Next City has agreed to use Mike's first name only to protect his safety and privacy as he engages in this sensitive work. "So I reached out to say, hey, I want to volunteer for anything you might need—driving, hosting, whatever."

But he also wanted to share a proposal: What if recreational pilots like himself could volunteer their skills to get abortion seekers the care they needed?

For over a decade, the Midwest Access Coalition has worked to provide financial and logistical support for abortion seekers in the region, which includes Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, and other states with the country's most restrictive abortion bans, Next City reports.

MAC coordinates a unique plan for each client—most of whom are traveling to Illinois for an abortion—coordinating the logistics of hotels and transportation while also navigating the constellation of different laws governing the right to abortion.

Well before the overturning of Roe v. Wade two years ago, thousands of Americans were already facing economic barriers that put abortion out of reach. But the fall of Roe exacerbated these issues even in states where abortion remains legal, forcing them to shoulder an increasing burden.

To help meet the growing need, the Midwest Access Coalition has had to get increasingly creative. That's meant collaboration with other practical support funds across the nation—and working with Mike to build a network of volunteer pilots to offer low-cost air travel that could take MAC's work to new heights.

Meet Elevated Access

In 2021, Mike took two MAC board members on a demo flight to pitch his idea. The demonstration immediately won over the organization: Ground transportation sometimes isn't fast enough for MAC's clients to receive the urgent care they need, and commercial air travel can be prohibitively expensive. Plus, traveling by private plane means there's no need to purchase tickets or go through TSA.

So in 2022, just days before the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision was leaked, Mike founded the nonprofit Elevated Access as a sister organization to MAC. When MAC requests a flight for one of its clients, Elevated Access sends out a hobby pilot to make the trip, who covers the costs associated with the flight.

Less than three years later, Elevated Access now has a network of over 400 vetted pilots, has flown abortion seekers in and out of more than 40 states, and is partnered with about 80 abortion and other practical support funds, including numerous organizations working to expand gender-affirming care access.

Mike credits much of his nonprofit's early growth to a TikTok post by a friend with a small, social justice-oriented account with just a few thousand followers. A month after the post promoting Elevated Access went viral, more than 500 pilots had reached out to the organization. And before the official Dobbs decision was released, Elevated Access had flown its first abortion seeker.

"I never expected it to grow that quickly," Mike says. "I expected it to be something in my free time until I retired." But the rush of interest from both volunteer pilots and abortion support funds shows the depth of the need.

To craft solutions to the growing challenges facing abortion seekers, nonprofits and practical support funds frequently collaborate across the region and the country. Many of these connections are built through Apiary, a national hub for abortion and other funds.

"We're constantly supporting each other, working cases and coming up with ideas to best support our clients," says Patti Daschbach, who serves on the board of Elevated Access and as the co-director of client services at MAC.

In one case, a MAC client couldn't afford a baby seat to travel with her child on an Elevated Access flight. Daschbach connected with a third group, a local practical support fund, to pay for that baby seat.

Unfortunately, the need for these solutions will likely be ongoing, he says.

"These problems are systemic problems that predate Dobbs, and [abortion rights] will always be under attack in a lot of different ways," Mike says. "Just because we may get legalization a year from now doesn't mean we can wipe our hands and call it done. There will still be a lot of work to do."

Abortion Care in a Post-Dobbs Midwest

Despite their inventive solutions, practical support funds like MAC still struggle with the increasing demand for reproductive health care.

Prior to the Dobbs decision, the majority of MAC clients were coming from Indiana or within Illinois. In recent years, MAC says nearly one-third of abortion seekers are traveling from Texas.

"With so many more people from out of state traveling to states that still have abortion, it's pushing those wait times out for people who live here," says Dreith. One resident of Wichita, Kansas, was forced to travel to Minnesota to receive treatment and avoid a three-week wait for an appointment in-state. MAC helped her cover the travel, lodging, and other incidental costs from the unexpected detour.

For some clients, wait times at nearby clinics would push them past the legal time limit for an abortion. Many of these abortion seekers would also face the crushing financial pressure—often impossible to shoulder—of taking multiple days off work and paying for all of their travel expenses.

For clients cornered by these obstacles to their bodily autonomy, MAC is quite literally a lifeline. If forced into childbirth, they face both the risk of health complications and the crippling financial pressure of raising a child.

"This is a matter of life and death in some cases," Dreith says. These challenges are most intense for low-income, working-class abortion seekers who are the least likely to have the disposable income necessary to cover excess costs.

Though there was a rising wave of hope for some organizers with Vice President Kamala Harris's promise to restore the Roe v. Wade protections if elected president, this struggle did not begin with the fall of Roe. Nor would it end with the federal legalization of abortion.

"This was a problem even before Roe was ended with the Dobbs decision," says Alison Dreith, MAC's Director of Strategic Partnerships. "There are many obstacles abortion seekers have always had to face because abortion care has been outside of traditional medicine."

The Need for Government Funding

During the summer of 2022, the fall of Roe prompted a surge of attention to abortion advocacy work and brought in a large influx of donations. Since then, media coverage has slowed. And funding has slowed with it.

"The money is not sustainable," says Dreith. "The travel is not sustainable. There is just no way we can continue, as an abortion movement, to shoulder all of this burden."

There has been some movement in the right direction. Dreith points to the Illinois Department of Public Health, which in January pledged $2 million in grants for health departments and non-profits to fund reproductive health care training among qualified providers.

Still, funding is scarce nationwide, with many states only providing patients assistance under Medicaid when certain pregnancy requirements are met and only covering the cost of the procedure itself.

To alleviate pressure, she calls for local governments to expand the breadth and depth of programs to make reproductive health care open and accessible for all. "We are going to need the government to step up."

But public awareness of existing abortion funds and government assistance is just as important.

"People don't think about abortion until they need one," Daschbach says. "They have so many questions, and like, where do they even start?"

Like other abortion funds, MAC runs a hotline for people seeking assistance. Many calls come from clients who've been referred to MAC by a partner clinic after making an appointment.

But in her experience, health care providers are often unaware of the many abortion funds that exist and can help their patients in need. The more patients that health care professionals can refer to a local abortion fund, the more abortion seekers can receive the care they need.

"We're here, and we want to help your patient get to the clinic," Daschbach says.