This week, we’re talking to Oriaku Njoku, president of the National Network of Abortion Funds. Njoku is a Southerner who co-founded and directed ARC-Southeast, a regional abortion fund based in Atlanta, Georgia, that serves six states, before she began her position at NNAF in July.
What are the challenges for abortion seekers that are front of mind for you right now, a year after Dobbs?
Some of the things that have been coming up for me are, for instance, the idea of investing in abortion funds and abortion access as investment in our futures. Abortion funds are fielding even more calls, and some are supporting more people than ever before. The folks who are reaching out for abortion funds—Black, Indigenous, people of color, women, young folks, trans and gender-expansive people, people from poor, rural, working-class backgrounds—are also the folks who have experienced the most harm over the past year. They’re also the same group of folks who are most impacted by various levels of structural oppression that we experience every day. It’s not just that the current state of abortion access in the United States is horrible, it’s also that health care access in the United States for these groups of people is not where it needs to be. The larger structural and institutional issues are being exacerbated by the loss of abortion access.
It’s also that the cost of travel is skyrocketing and the logistics of getting people to their appointments is becoming more and more complex. Even with the legal protection of Roe, folks were still crossing state lines. But now, people are having to leave the region, in the South especially, to get abortion care.
The abortions funds on the ground are definitely meeting the challenge, as they always have. Regardless of what is happening on the outside, regardless of the political climate, the commitment of abortion funds and our membership is to ensure that no matter who you are, where you come from, what your lived experiences are, our membership will do what they can to ensure that you’re getting the abortion that you want and need on your own terms. But even as the need has increased, there has been this decline in donations and contributions since the Dobbs decision came down. The current state of affairs is not matching the current need. My hope is that this anniversary will renew interest, but we also have to acknowledge that this is not the time to get complacent. Just because the courts gave up on us in this instance, doesn’t mean that abortion funds are giving up on us or that we should give up on abortion funds.
When it was announced that you were stepping into the executive director position at NNAF, I couldn’t help but cheer a bit, because it felt so significant to have a Southerner in a national role like that. How has your background as a Southern Black RJ worker informed your new role?
One of the things that I learned from doing this work on the ground, is that Southerners are not resilient because of the trauma and the oppression that we’ve gone through. We’re resilient because we are inherently resilient.
At NNAF, when it comes to accountability, when it comes to that principled struggle, it is so worth it to me to take the time to build trust and community with one another. I’m not asking for us to move lockstep with each other in every single moment, but there is some sort of alignment that is required for us to be able to move in coordination with one another. Having experience with building coalition, doing that work in Georgia in spite of a hostile legal-political climate, we were still doing the work. We still had wins. We got to define what wins look like for us, not necessarily having them be dictated from the top.
Not only do I feel like this work is incredibly sacred, I feel deeply called to this work. There was a senator from North Carolina, Senator Natalie Murdock, that I was on a panel with last week—she was talking about what it means to be doing this work right now, and she was talking about this work being like an assignment. And coming from the South, working in the South with all these amazing organizers and mutual aid groups, I’m like, “Oh, I understand the assignment.”
I understand that the demands and the moves that we’re making even on a national scale must be informed by the work that’s happening on the ground. If we are not getting our guidance from the ground, if we are not getting our guidance from reproductive justice organizations, if we are not using the reproductive justice framework to inform and guide the way our work intersects with other issues, then we are really, truly missing an opportunity to have this next iteration of the movement be a reflection of what we always wanted, to have a movement that reflects all of us. This was not a movement of compromises. If we’re in the South, and we’re talking about the ways that others move, we go hard for our people. It’s not something that we’re like, “Oooh, I guess we’re talking about liberation, but like for this group of people, not that one.” That’s not who we are.
Even if it does get tough, there’s still a way that you can approach this work with love and with grace and with generosity. We also know that it’s important to pace ourselves, to take time and reflect and not keep trying to move from a place of scarcity. There is still so much abundance in possibility. Having a doom and gloom approach hasn’t ever served anyone. I’m like, “If we don’t think we’re gonna win, what are we doing, friends?” There are times where I’m like, I’m pretty sure I’m getting on folks nerves right now. And I’m not going to stop, because that’s the energy I bring to this work.
There’s this thing that happens with every election cycle where it’s like, oh, well, Black women did their job, they showed up, they saved democracy again. But we need to let people know that in this movement, we are actually witnessing a lot of leadership transitions. We’re amplifying the leadership of Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, gender-expansive folks within our movements. This cannot be another one of those moments where folks of color are the ones who end up saving this movement.
We actually need all of us in the spirit of this collective responsibility that we have not only to ourselves, but to each other, to really show up and show out differently in this moment. Those are the things that, being from the South, that’s how I have to do this work. I don’t know any other way to do it, whether we’re talking about me being a Southerner, or being raised by parents who are from Nigeria and part of the Global South, this is what our people do. We come from a legacy of folks who will always fight for each other, for our ability to self-determine and make decisions about our bodies and our families.
I really appreciated what you said earlier about finding the joy and abundance in your work. Can you elaborate on what that has meant to you?
Oh, my goodness, there’s so many places where I find joy in doing this work. I find it in the excitement around thinking that we can actually tap into this radical imagination of ours and dream of something that is completely different. We don’t have to accept the status quo anymore. I find a lot of joy in going against the grain and not taking a cookie-cutter approach to our liberation. I get really excited about that.
What can folks do right now?
The easiest thing that someone can do, especially if you’re talking about a long-term investment, is become a sustaining donor for your local abortion fund. Lend your skills, your time, your expertise. Trust the leadership of the people on the ground who have been doing this work for a while, especially the BIPOC-led organizations. I wouldn’t say you have to divest from the legacy organizations, but do understand that there’s a different way to do this work.
Also, urge your congressional representatives to support measures that preserve and expand reproductive health care.
