Three years after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Georgians are still fighting for abortion rights by protesting, writing letters, litigating, and fundraising.
This week, more than 200 women gathered in Chamblee to raise $17,000 for women to gain access to abortion procedures at a sold-out event for the Red Tent Fund.
Founded in 2024, the Red Tent Fund is a nonprofit, national abortion fund rooted in Jewish values and teachings that affirm the right to abortion for all. More than 80 percent of Jewish adults across the U.S. support access to abortion – more than any other religious group in Georgia.
Founder Allison Tombros Korman said the Red Tent Fund has served more than 800 women in 33 states in just a year, and is on track to provide $500,000 in direct funding in 2025.
“Funding for abortion has never been more critical than it is in this moment,” Korman said.
Korman explained that abortion is one of the few medical procedures where the patient is expected to show up with “dollars in hand.”
“Depending on where you are, depending on if you’re having a medication or a surgical abortion, it could be $600. That is so financially out of reach for so many people that it just makes abortion a non-starter. That’s why abortion funds were created,” Korman said.
Korman said she created the Red Tent Fund so that Jewish people, who have such longstanding support for abortion, “would never again feel like they have to choose between their Jewish identity and their belief in reproductive health and abortion access.”
Funds go directly to clinics, and recipients of the Red Tent Fund do not have to identify as Jewish.
The deeply personal event included a panel of Jewish experts in law, the rabbinate, public health, and women’s health as they described what inspired them to advocate for abortion rights. The only high school student on the panel, Hannah Throne, said she was raised with the philosophy of “My body, my choice.”
Georgia State Rep. Esther Panitch provided an update on what’s expected in the January 2026 legislative session. A Georgia court is holding onto a six-week abortion ban, although SisterSong is in litigation over the issue.
“We need everyone to show up. We need you to call your representatives, especially if they are Republicans in the metro area, and lean on them,” Panitch said. “Tell them how this impacts you, because in the metro they are going to have a hard time with this issue going into their next election.”
Panitch said several Republican lawmakers have told her privately that they don’t oppose abortion access.
“We are entitled to access our reproductive rights in alignment with the way that we live as Jews,” Korman said. “We have been leaders in this field. We are abortion providers, we run clinics, we are politicians, we are researchers, we are philanthropists. And nobody gets to tell us that we don’t have a seat at the table for an issue that we have been leading on for as long as we have.”