At 11 p.m. on a weeknight a year after the fall of Roe v. Wade, our phones were buzzing as we navigated securing safe housing, medication, clothing, and food for someone who received abortion care in Los Angeles. That’s what we do as a collective of abortion doulas—we volunteer our time to provide free emotional, physical, educational, and spiritual “support to people as they go through the process of ending a pregnancy.” We work together across Los Angeles County to attend our clients’ appointments, coordinate grocery store runs, and secure funds for hotel rooms. Our clients have traveled near and far to our “sanctuary state” to access one of the most common, essential, and basic forms of health care: abortion care. 

While Californians and our lawmakers have secured legal protections for abortion providers and abortion seekers, the reality is abysmal for a lot of people navigating abortion care. We are still lacking access to funds, the health care infrastructure to cover the full range of an abortion seeker’s needs, the political will of elected officials to resist anti-abortion extremism, and the resources to support companionship and advocacy throughout the process. We work to fill in the gaps because access starts in the community. Despite abortion support not being systemically prioritized, when clients are matched with an abortion doula, they are met with someone who takes their needs seriously and helps them navigate getting care in our city.

Doulas like us who have been supporting abortion seekers for years have witnessed the patterns of far-right extremists who target clinics—and they’ve only become more emboldened and interested in California since Roe v. Wade fell. DuPont Clinic, a Washington, D.C.-based provider, is one of the few clinics in the nation that specializes in abortion later in pregnancy. In their efforts to open a new clinic to support clients in and traveling to Los Angeles, they searched for months, and the only property they could find that would rent to them was in Beverly Hills. During renovations, a loud minority of anti-abortion extremists started protesting outside of the building DuPont had leased, which is when law enforcement got involved and the city started withholding permits. 

After DuPont had sunk money and time into the property, the landlord revoked their lease, and the city allowed it to happen. The DuPont Clinic has since filed two lawsuits against the city of Beverly Hills and the landlord, the publicly traded Douglas Emmett (NYSE: DEI).

As long as a well-respected abortion clinic like DuPont Clinic is not allowed to open in places like Beverly Hills, then access to abortion in Los Angeles and our state is not protected. We’ve seen this trend across California: cities and police colluding to stifle efforts to expand abortion access in our communities. From Fontana to Beverly Hills, this issue is the same: anti-abortion extremist groups are finding allyship in local officials, corporate landlords, and the police to limit access to abortion.

We imagine a city where reproductive health care, including abortions, are not just legal, but accessible: anti-abortion extremism is not tolerated, misinformation is not perpetuated, abortion doula support is normalized, clinics and doctors operate without fear for safety, elected officials do not set arbitrary limitations, and cost is never a barrier to care. But sadly, this is not our reality. Unfortunately, the right to access an abortion only exists if you can afford it. If anti-abortion activists can shut down one clinic in our city, they won’t stop. As abortion doulas, we also know that when cost is a barrier to care, the most marginalized in our communities suffer. 

Everyone deserves safe access to abortions, and we cannot allow extremist pressure to get in the way of that mission; this is the Los Angeles that abortion clinics and abortion support organizations are fighting for. California cannot claim to be a leader in abortion access unless we have clinics that meet the full scope of abortion health care needs. Well-trusted clinics, like Dupont Clinic, with strong ties to the communities they serve, are desperately needed in Los Angeles. Both because California has become a critical abortion access state and because every person deserves access to quality abortion care—including later in pregnancy. 

Diana Venegas, Maddie Alpert McCarthy, Jess Fuselier, and Sarah Michal Hamid are abortion doulas at the Los Angeles Abortion Support Collective (LAASC), a local volunteer-led-and-run collective providing free emotional, physical, educational, and spiritual support for those seeking abortion care in and traveling to Los Angeles.