Some couples use wedding regries to raise money for abortion rights

When Jen McCartney and Jay Balanga made a regry for their wedding Oct. 29, among the typical items they included — plates, towels, tablecloths — was a less traditional request: donations to the National Network of Abortion Funds.
McCartney, 32, a comedy writer, and Balanga, 33, a doctoral candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, said raising money for abortion access as part of their wedding was a way to honor her mother, Karen Blumenthal, a journal and the author of “Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights,” who died in 2020.
But the couple, who live in Los Angeles, were also motivated to request the donations what they said was a more urgent cause than furnishing their home as newlyweds: protecting access to abortion, a constitutional right that was eliminated the Supreme Court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overruled Roe v. Wade. Their regry, created using wedding planning website Zola, has already raised more than $750 for the National Network of Abortion Funds from nine people.
“It’s kind of us saying that it’s very meaningful to get a beautiful bowl,” McCartney said, “and it’s equally meaningful to us to be able to take that money and use it to help people to have access to reproductive health care.”
Charitable regries have become a popular way for marrying couples to highlight their shared values, said Amy Shack Egan, the founder and CEO of Modern Rebel, a wedding planning company in New York’s Brooklyn borough. And as the debate over abortion has moved to the political forefront, requests for donations to organizations that support access to reproductive rights have risen.
Emily Forrest, Zola’s director of communications, said there have been 858 regries requesting donations in support of abortion rights created on the website in 2022 compared with 201 created in 2021. This year, such regries have raised more than $100,000 in donations — $70,000 of which has been raised since early May, when Politico published the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision — added Forrest, who noted that regries on Zola raised about $24,000 for abortion advocacy groups in 2021.

On wedding planning website the Knot, there have been 137 regries requesting donations in support of reproductive rights created for weddings happening between May 2022 and May 2023, compared with 61 created for weddings happening between May 2021 and May 2022, said Melissa Bach, the senior director of communications for the Knot Worldwide. Regries for weddings happening between May 2022 and May 2023 have raised $44,000 for abortion rights organizations, compared with $18,000 raised regries for weddings that happened between May 2021 and May 2022, she added.
On both websites, there have been fewer regries requesting funds for anti-abortion organizations. Three such regries have been created on Zola since January 2021, Forrest said, noting they raised a total of $50. And on the Knot, Bach said that four such regries have been created for weddings happening between May 2021 and May 2023. Those regries have raised $70 for anti-abortion groups, she added.
Neither Zola nor the Knot give funds raised regries directly to organizations; the money is deposited into a bank account provided a couple, who must donate it themselves.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor and horian at the University of California, Davis, who has written five books on abortion in the United States, said reproductive rights groups had long had a fundraising advantage over anti-abortion organizations, in part because the former tend to be more recognizable. “There hasn’t really been the equivalent of a Planned Parenthood on the pro-life side,” Ziegler said, adding that most Americans support legalizing abortion.
According to her, raising money for abortion rights groups through wedding regries is “the kind of setup that would favor the pro-choice movement” because it “horically has had a larger base of support from people who haven’t been as intense” as opponents of abortion. Donating via a regry is “not the sort of thing that requires you to be spending all day outside of a clinic either helping people enter or blocking them from entering — it’s something that is fairly low workload,” Ziegler said, “and that’s where the fact that you have these majorities helps you.”
Forrest, the Zola spokesperson, said the National Network of Abortion Funds was the second most popular reproductive rights organization featured on the website’s regries this year, behind Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood has also been the most popular abortion advocacy group featured on the Knot’s regries, according to Bach, its spokesperson.
Adaline Lining and Michael Schlegelmilch, who had a civil union in July 2020, named the National Network of Abortion Funds as one of several organizations guests could donate to in lieu of giving them a gift at a wedding celebration they held in July.
The couple, who live in Somerville, Massachusetts, had initially planned to ask for donations to Labor Notes, a group that supports unions, and the Massachusetts Bail Fund. But Schlegelmilch, 35, a high school English teacher, and Lining, 31, a sixth grade social studies teacher, chose to also include the abortion advocacy group on their Zola regry after the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision.
“In my family, growing up, abortion was talked about openly as a choice and thing to support and do,” Lining said.
Two of their guests donated a combined $125 to the National Network of Abortion Funds, while Labor Notes received $125 from four guests and the Massachusetts Bail Fund received $475 from four guests.
The National Network of Abortion Funds dributes grants to more than 90 local organizations across the country, which support a range of needs related to abortion access, including paying for the procedure, transportation or lodging.

Its managing director, Debasri Ghosh, said she was unaware that couples have been requesting donations to reproductive rights groups on their wedding regries. But those requests did not surprise her.
“We see abortion funding as an act of love, an act of compassion, an act of community care,” Ghosh said, “so it isn’t surprising to me that people are choosing to honor their marriages supporting abortion access.”
Some couples who have requested donations on their regries say that getting their guests to talk about abortion access is as much — or even more — of a goal as raising money.
Rather than collecting donations to the National Network of Abortion Funds through their Zola regry, Rachel Altmaier and Angelo Lecce, who were married Oct. 1, included a link to the organization’s website.
sending their guests straight to the group, Altmaier, 32, an engineer, and Lecce, 30, a business systems analyst, could not track if or how much people donated. But for the couple, who live in Silver Spring, Maryland, raising awareness of the cause through their wedding was just as important.
“We don’t need to know whether or not they donated,” Lecce said. “If that allows them to reflect without judgment, I think that’s a good thing.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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