New York City just became the first city in America to earmark money directly funding abortions, allocating $250,000 in public funds to go toward clinics that provide abortions for women who can’t afford them and those traveling in from other states.
According to city officials as quoted by the New York Times, that $250,000 will help roughly 500 women abort their children.
“The abortion access fund provides payment to clinics on behalf of women who might not be able to pay for abortions, but are not covered by insurance or Medicaid. Roughly a third of the fund goes to women who come to New York for abortions,” the New York Times reports.
The public money will be funneled through the New York Abortion Access Fund, which screens women who may qualify for the money based on their income and inability to pay. The woman then goes in for the procedure, and the NYAAF pays the bill as well as the woman's transportation costs, if necessary.
If that's not bad enough, the Times reports the whole public-money side of the issue was handled on the down-low:
For the most part, the effort to get city funding for the organization, called Fund Abortion N.Y.C., was under the radar. Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst for the Guttmacher Institute, which researches abortion, said advocates were afraid to bring too much attention to the campaign for fear of derailing it. 'This is something that has been done kind of quietly,' she said. 'I’ve been sitting with crossed fingers and toes.'
The article adds that while $250,000 isn’t a whole lot of money (just enough to kill several hundred babies or so), the measure is meant more as a “symbolic if provocative move as more conservative states take steps to all but ban abortion.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed a new law expanding his state’s legal abortion accessthrough the ninth month of pregnancy for virtually any reason.