If you took a poll, most people would tell you that it feels like they’re doing more work nowadays.

At the Baltimore Abortion Fund (BAF), a non-profit that helps people seeking abortions in Baltimore City and Maryland, they have the numbers to prove it.

Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year, the decision that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion, BAF has served an additional 50% of patients seeking abortion care than in the year before the court’s decision. From June 2022 through June 2023, the non-profit assisted 1,621 clients, up from 1,150 in the year before.

In part, leadership at BAF said they were able to serve those clients because of funding that has come in through grants like Baltimore City’s Abortion Protection Fund. Applications are now open again for those funds for Baltimore City-based abortion care providers. This round caps out at $30,000 for providers. Last year the city gave out awards of up to $50,000 to five organizations. The Abortion Protection Fund is run through the Baltimore Civic Fund, comprised of taxpayer and private funds, to manage the public-private partnerships between city programs and nonprofits.

In a news release announcing the funds last week, Mayor Brandon Scott wrote that Baltimore City would always “stand in strong support of comprehensive reproductive health care.” Scott, a Democrat, is up for re-election in 2024. In June 2022, the Baltimore City Council created the Abortion Protection Fund and designated the city as an “abortion rights protection jurisdiction” via a resolution.

“We’re really grateful that the city of Baltimore recognizes that abortion access is an ongoing public health crisis and is committed to… funding to be able to help organizations like ours be able to address the needs of people seeking abortions in Maryland,” said Lynn McCann-Yeh, the co-director of Baltimore Abortion Fund, who says that BAF will be applying for the current round of grant money although she admits that with the amount of work in front of the organization, it will likely go very quickly.

There’s not only increased demand, but the organization has worked to build out a holistic range of services to offer people seeking abortions, and those have increased in cost. “That's, you know, helping with travel accommodations, child care, meals, all of the other factors that go into being able to get medical care whether you're a Maryland resident, or whether people are traveling from out of state,” said McCann-Yeh.

Maryland’s politicians from Mayor Brandon Scott to Governor Wes Moore have expressed the desire to make the state a haven for people seeking abortion care. While more conservative states have worked to restrict access, Maryland has worked to protect it.

“We have seen an overall increase in all of the clients that we're serving across the board, both in terms of Maryland residents, and also people who are traveling from out of state,” said McCann-Yeh, although most patients are still fairly regional from states like Pennsylvania and Virginia. She notes that even as states like Maryland work to strengthen abortion access, it isn’t enough to offset the hostility towards it in other states. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health policy research center, there were 30,000 fewer abortions in the six-months following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Center Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe.

There are now 14 states that block abortion at almost every stage of pregnancy, with varying carve-outs and exceptions for life and health of the pregnant person or for those pregnancies conceived by rape or incest.