Thank you for allowing me to e-mail you. I just discovered your website, which is an excellent resource for women and women's issues. My name is Jacob and I am a student at Carleton College. I am taking a Women's Studies class at present, and am in the midst of a research project. My project is on the lack of access to reproductive health care for women on welfare. Could you give me some resources for this topic, whether online or not, or could you fill me in on some of the ways that poor women's access is limited? Thank you very much! Sincerely, Jacob

I hope that you have already found your way to the National Abortion Federation, to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, both of which are experts when it comes to statistics on reproductive health care. For instance, they produce statistics on the number of rural women who are without an abortion provider (86% of all counties are without and abortion provider) and the number of women who use medicaid to get an abortion.

I am involved with the Third Wave Foundation, which among other things has a fund that grants money to women who are in need of an abortion and/or transportation costs. Most of the women who contact us are under the age of 20, have to travel at least 200 miles, and they are often having these abortions later because of lack of access of adequate health care and funding. This one example is proof enough that the situation is only getting worse. I hope that you find all of the information that you need and that you help to educate your classmates on what an important issue this is

—Amy