On Friday, the day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, the phones at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids were “ringing off the hook” as people called to make donations to one of the country’s only abortion choice funds hosted by a church.
“Now that the ruling is official, we’ve got quite a bit of calls and messages coming into the church already, wanting to support the fund and the church, but also just wanting to know if there is going to be a pivot or if there is going to be a change in resources,” said the Rev. Christopher Roe, the acting senior minister at Fountain Street Church.
His answer: “Yes, and all of it.”
Michigan has an abortion ban on the books from 1931 that would make all abortions in the state a felony, unless to save the life of the “pregnant woman.” That law has not been in effect for nearly 50 years under Roe and is currently unenforceable because of a court ordered injunction.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Planned Parenthood of Michigan (PPMI) both filed separate lawsuits in April that would make the 1931 abortion ban unenforceable.
Last month, Court of Claims Judge Elizabeth Gleicher ordered an injunction in the Planned Parenthood lawsuit, which means enforcement of the ban is paused until the court makes a final decision in the case.
Fountain Street Church has been accepting donations to its fund for decades and directs the money to the two reproductive health clinics in the city — Planned Parenthood’s Irwin/Martin Health Center and the Heritage Clinic — to help cover the costs of abortion.
Now that the ruling is official, we’ve got quite a bit of calls and messages coming into the church already, wanting to support the fund and the church, but also just wanting to know if there is going to be a pivot or if there is going to be a change in resources.
– The Rev. Christopher Roe, the acting senior minister at Fountain Street Church
The church writes the checks to the clinics for people who go in seeking an abortion and are in need of financial support. Roe said the choice fund has helped over 5,000 people, and he personally signs about 40 to 50 checks every two weeks to help finance these abortions through the fund.
Since the fund’s inception, it’s gone through some growing pains.
“There are some discrepancies over when [the fund] started, because it seemed to have come to fruition in the ‘90s and early 2000s. But in reality, the church was raising funds for abortion access for decades before that,” Roe said.
Roe said he considers the fund’s beginning to be when the Frey Foundation, a family fund in Grand Rapids that awards grants to nonprofit organizations for projects to enhance child development, protect natural resources, promote the arts and build community, donated $50,000 to get the choice fund started.
The mission was to “help poor women get abortions.” But Roe called that language “draconian.”
“Now we say its a fund and resource available to all pregnant-capable people who need an abortion,” Roe said.
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With Roe v. Wade overturned and an unclear future for abortion access in Michigan, the fund may need to shift again — beyond just expanding language to be more inclusive.
“It’s been legal, safe and secure, so we haven’t had to really get creative thinking about what the fund will look like if [the 1931 law is enforced] in Michigan,” Roe said. “How much of the wheel do we want to reinvent as far as getting people to other states where they can’t get that access? Or do we work with a network that does that and we just financially support them? It’s like an ethos of how much advocacy we need to start doing.”
Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker said Monday that he won’t “ignore” the 1931 law, and if law enforcement brings a report or investigation to him that a doctor performed an abortion and violated the law, he could prosecute them.
Becker went on to say that the 1931 “does not allow for charges to be filed against the woman seeking or getting an abortion. It only allows for charges to be filed against a doctor performing an abortion.”
What this means for the abortion clinics in Kent County and the Fountain Street Church’s mission with the choice fund is unclear at this time.
But Roe believes it could create some challenges.
“My first reaction was rage,” Roe said, reflecting on the news about the Kent County prosecutor. “But I think besides it being an injustice for all pregnant people in Kent county, it does complicate the choice fund because if Heritage clinic or Planned Parenthood decide that they’re not comfortable or able to provide abortions, then it means that we might have to seek out services and permits that are outside of Kent County.”
The Fountain Street Church helped to launch Planned Parenthood in West Michigan in the 1960s.
“As a liberal church, they thought we need to have access to safe health care, to reproductive justice and equity,” said Roe. “The church still saw itself as needing to be the stewards of a healthy and safe community. And so even if there were people maybe in the 50s or 60s who were not necessarily fully on board with Planned Parenthood at the time, they still felt like those were resources that the whole society deserved to have.”
Although it isn’t clear exactly how many abortion funds are hosted by churches around the country, Roe said he is fairly confident that Fountain Street Church is the only one in Michigan.
And Fountain Street Church has made a name for itself around the country as a leader in this.
“We have had churches from other states reaching out to us saying, ‘Can we talk about this? Can we see what your church did to get this going? Because I think we’re gonna need this in our state, too.’ So I will say that across state lines, we’re seeing interest,” Roe said.
Roe said the fund currently has about $100,000, but “it goes quick.”
The average cost of an abortion is around $550, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a national reproductive rights think tank.
Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids | Allison R. Donahue
Much of the fund is financed through donations from local organizations, businesses and community members, but those efforts were sidelined due to COVID-19.
“There are local businesses that will do things to help support the fund and broaden the impacts. But the biggest challenge that we’ve had with COVID is that it totally shook out all of our normal fundraising that we would do,” Roe said. “That was really where businesses would step up in sponsoring these events we were doing.”
Jenny Kinne, the owner of a local Bookstore, Books and Mortar, has been a longtime financial supporter of the choice fund and formerly sat on the choice fund board of directors.
Kinne is hosting an event at the bookstore Wednesday to encourage people to sign the Reproductive Freedom For All ballot initiative, which seeks to protect reproductive freedom and Michiganders’ right to make and carry out decisions relating to pregnancy, including abortion, birth control, prenatal care, and childbirth.
The RFFA coalition will need to collect 425,059 signatures — 10% of the total votes cast in the 2018 gubernatorial election — by July 11 for the initiative to be placed on the November ballot.
For Kinne, protecting the right to safe and legal abortions is personal and she wants to expand community efforts to keep that right a reality in Michigan.
“I think it’s particularly important as a business leader for me to get involved and use any networks and community connection I have to spread the word about why restricting access to abortion is so dangerous, not just in Kent County, but across the state,” Kinne said. “I am a woman who owns a business. It is female-owned and operated. And it’s incredibly important that I’m defending reproductive health care for myself, for those who work with me, those I love and for our wider community.”
authored by Allison R. Donahue
First published at https%3A%2F%2Fmichiganadvance.com%2F2022%2F06%2F30%2Fa-grand-rapids-church-continues-its-long-history-of-raising-money-to-support-abortion-rights%2F
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