If Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights, Why Are We Crowdfunding Them?

Every Human Rights Day, governments celebrate their commitments to dignity, equality, and bodily autonomy. They issue statements, share graphics, reaffirm values. But here in Alberta, those promises don’t match the reality on the ground, especially when it comes to reproductive health.

If reproductive rights are truly human rights, why are communities like ours forced to crowdfund the basic infrastructure needed to deliver them?

Abortion is legal. But it can be hard to access, and its going to get harder.

Yes, abortion is legal in Alberta. But anyone who has tried to get care here knows that legality doesn’t equal accessibility.

Clinics have closed, providers are fewer, wait times are longer, and people in Southern Alberta often travel hours just to get a procedure that should be available in their own community.

And now the UCP has passed a resolution calling on the government to stop public funding for third-trimester abortions. A move that shows just how quickly legal rights can be undermined when funding and infrastructure disappear.

This gap between “legal” and actually possible is where people fall through the cracks. When you factor in travel, childcare, unpaid time off, medical delays, and stigma, abortion access becomes something only certain people can realistically navigate. It’s a breakdown in public services that hits rural, low-income, young, and marginalized people the hardest. This is how human rights erode.

Abortion is legal here. But unless we build the infrastructure to make it accessible, legality doesn’t mean much.

The Non-profit Industrial Complex: When Governments Outsource Their Responsibilities

What’s happening in Alberta is part of a larger pattern across Canada: the slow transfer of responsibility for essential services from public systems to non-profits, volunteer networks, and mutual aid groups.

This is the non-profit industrial complex at work. A systemic offloading of public responsibility onto under-resourced organizations, where non-profits become the patchwork safety net rather than the government fulfilling its duty to provide care.

Instead of funding clinics, supporting providers, or expanding local capacity, governments praise “community initiatives” while leaving communities to shoulder the financial, emotional, and logistical burden. What should be public health becomes dependent on whatever fundraising efforts people can mobilize.

If Alberta is going to keep offloading essential healthcare onto under-funded grassroots groups like Pro-Choice YQL, then we only have two choices: let the gaps grow, or organize to close them ourselves.

Crowdfunding Basic Healthcare Is Not a Sign of a Healthy System

No one should have to donate for someone else to access abortion.

No one should have to host fundraisers, build new infrastructure, or plug systemic holes with community labour just to ensure a person can exercise a right they should already have.

And yet this is exactly where we find ourselves.

Mutual aid isn’t a solution. It exists because the system is failing. But it works. People show up for each other long before governments ever do.

So while we keep pushing for long-term structural change, we also have to keep each other afloat right now. That means supporting the networks that are already doing the work: funding rides, covering travel, helping with childcare, finding appointments, keeping people safe, and refusing to let geography or income determine who gets care.

We’re crowdfunding a clinic because the alternative is letting care degrade even further. We’re building something the public system should have built decades ago. We’re refusing to let politics determine who gets healthcare and who doesn’t.

Mutual Aid Is a Human Rights Response

Human rights are supposed to be guaranteed. They’re not meant to depend on charity, geography, or political will. But when governments stop doing the work of protecting those rights, people have to organize.

When abortion is legal but not accessible, the right exists in theory but not in practice. Mutual aid bridges systemic failure. It doesn’t create new rights, rather it makes existing ones usable.

That’s why mutual aid isn’t separate from human rights work. It exists because the right to health, autonomy, and dignity isn’t being upheld by the institutions responsible for protecting it. When people fund travel, share information, organize support, and build clinics, they’re enforcing rights that already belong to everyone.

This Human Rights Day, Help Us Close the Gap Between Rights and Reality

This work does not happen in the abstract. It happens because real people show up, stay engaged, and commit to their communities even when the work is hard.

Amanda and Aaron are two of those people. Their commitment to reproductive justice is rooted in community care. They understand that access does not magically exist just because a right is written down, and that when systems fall short, it is people who step in to protect each other.

Their support for building an abortion clinic in Lethbridge comes from that same place. A belief that healthcare should be local, accessible, and grounded in dignity. A belief that communities can and should take care of each other, even while pushing for the systemic change we deserve.

We’re asking you to help us build the clinic Lethbridge needs to make care local, timely, and accessible for people in Southern Alberta. Every donation goes directly towards supporting the clinic and patient needs.

We should not have to crowdfund basic healthcare. But until governments catch up with their own values, we’ll keep doing the work ourselves.