Shunned for her stance on Israel, a Jewish US abortion activist starts her own fund
Allison Tombros Korman launches the Red Tent Fund in response to what she calls a movement steeped in antisemitism amid a one-sided conversation about Gaza that isolates many Jews
Reporter at The Times of Israel
NEW YORK — When antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment pushed longtime abortion rights activist and educator Allison Tombros Korman out of one tent, she pitched one of her own.
The Red Tent Fund, a national abortion care fund launched on June 26, is Korman’s response to what she describes as a reproductive rights movement steeped in antisemitism.
“Since October 7, this is the first time my Jewish identity has caused any kind of impact — positive or negative — on my work. I’ve always been a public health professional focusing on sexual reproductive health and there has just never been a time where this has been problematic before,” Korman told The Times of Israel from her home office.
While Jewish law is unanimously understood to allow, and even require, abortion if the mother’s physical well-being is endangered by the fetus, some, including Korman, interpret the law to mean that denying abortion care in any circumstance infringes on a Jewish woman’s ability to exercise her reproductive freedom — which impinges on her right to freely exercise her religion.
Having spent much of her career ensuring access to legal and safe abortions regardless of one’s religion, ethnicity, or faith, Korman was thrilled when she became a senior executive at the DC Abortion Fund (DCAF) in October 2022. The grassroots nonprofit helps provide abortion funding for those in the Washington, DC–Maryland–Virginia area.
Then on October 7, a month after she started work, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists breached Israel’s southern border. They burned, raped, tortured and dismembered their victims, slaughtering 1,200 people of all ages, most of them civilians, and taking 251 hostages to the Gaza Strip.
Korman, who had staffed all events and fundraisers at the DCAF, was the sole Jewish staff member and thought someone would reach out to console her. No one did.
As she explained in an April 10 essay for Tablet Magazine, it quickly became apparent that the DCAF would refuse to acknowledge the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Not only that, Korman would be remonstrated for raising the issue.
In the ensuing months, the DCAF led a boycott of the pro-Israel Jewish singer Matisyahu and asserted that Zionism and Israel were inherently contradictory to reproductive justice. The organization also informed Korman that it was sending a letter to the DCAF’s board declaring its intention to participate in a walkout in support of Palestine.
“We are using our collective power as DCAF workers to show up for Gazans and call for an immediate ceasefire, as well as liberation for Palestinians… we cannot ignore the mass violations to human rights and sexual and reproductive health outcomes that we’re seeing out of Gaza,” read to the letter. The letter didn’t mention Israeli survivors of rape or assault, or the hostages.
And so Korman launched the Red Tent Fund. The new organization, which has so far raised $30,000, will begin directly funding abortions in fall 2024 for anyone, regardless of faith, religion, or lack thereof.
“It’s so reminiscent of the kinds of ways that Jews were either pushed out or not welcome in other spaces in other times in history and we’ve had to go out and create those for ourselves. Either universities, or social clubs, or hospitals. And so this is really just an iteration of that same story over again,” Korman said.
The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
The Times of Israel: You wrote a piece for Tablet Magazine last spring. Did anyone from the DCAF contact you after it was published?
Allison Tombros Korman: I have not heard from anyone from my former organization. The folks I have heard from in the abortion movement are primarily individuals who experienced similar things in their work. Maybe not to the extent that I experienced them at the abortion fund, but I have heard from Jewish people who feel very alienated and unwelcome. Unfortunately, there are stories with a lot of common threads in other spaces.
Has the DCAF ever commented on international politics or other conflicts before?
This was the first time in my experience they weighed in on a geo-political issue outside of their mission. There were certainly times we waded into national abortion happenings, like having an opinion on legislation. But to my knowledge, there had never been any focus on the international aspect of this work before.
That’s not to say there aren’t a handful of folks who come to the DC area to seek abortion care from other countries. But helping those folks get care is very different from taking a policy stance on something that’s happening in their home country or across the world.
How is this episode impacting abortion care?
At the end of the day, this is about abortion seekers and what they need. It’s about how we can be there to support these people.
My concern when I was deciding whether to stay at DCAF, one thing that really was upsetting to me, was seeing people that I knew or I knew of who identified as Jewish being made to choose between their own identity and their support for abortion access. And continuing to give to organizations that were so harmful to their Jewish identity just so they could continue to fund abortion — it didn’t feel right to them, and it didn’t feel right to me. And if those folks who traditionally have given to this movement over and over again were to step away, it was abortion seekers who would pay the price for that.
In a June 26 article, the DCAF alleged that “people with power and money” are scapegoating them and that they are not antisemitic.
They are intentionally missing the point.
My statement regarding the article is as follows: I respect that there are strong feelings on all sides of the conflict. My position remains that forcing the conflation of a war in the Middle East with the work of abortion funds in the United States distracts from the vital mission of the abortion movement. It’s unfortunate that the language used by the anonymous sources in the article is indicative of the experience I had at the organization after October 7. The use of coded language and dog whistles against Jewish abortion supporters who voiced legitimate concerns about funds making one-sided statements about the conflict is one of the reasons I and other Jewish supporters are looking for other avenues to support abortion access.
What drew you to work in this area of public health?
I have always felt passionately about this work. I think a really informative experience for me was going to a Planned Parenthood clinic with a friend when I was a teenager. The health care providers treated us like adults with autonomy over our own bodies. I remember feeling shocked, in a great way, that we were trusted to make our own decisions about what we needed in that moment.
That really informed my whole trajectory to work in public health. It has always been something that resonated with me, whether it was violence prevention or sexual health reproductive rights, the idea that an individual should be the one to make determinations over their own body.
The US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. Abortion rights are front and center in this presidential election. How does the Red Tent Fund fit into that?
We are a national abortion fund, funding abortion in states where abortion is lawful. It is open to anyone who is on board with the principles that ground our work. You do not have to be Jewish to give donations and you don’t have to be Jewish to receive funding. I just keep saying that in order to be in the tent you need to be on board with the idea that for people who identify as Jewish abortion is both religious and reproductive freedom for us.
We are seeing the implications of politics every day in this work, whether it’s an abortion ban or these ongoing court cases that are happening that are so confusing for abortion seekers in some states, who don’t have a clear understanding of what their rights are. These politics are having a very real life impact on individuals and so the Red Tent Fund isn’t going to take a position on politics, but we couldn’t operate without being aware that there are circumstances surrounding us legally, politically — all of that impacting abortion seekers on the ground.
I imagine the name for your organization comes from Anita Diamant’s book “The Red Tent.”
I remember reading the book when it came out and I have since re-read it in the past couple of months. It just struck me that if you are familiar with that book it tells you everything you need to know about who we are as an organization. It’s about the entirety of an individual’s reproductive health life from menstruation to childbearing years and beyond. It is about how people in the red tent care for each other and look out for each other. It’s about tradition and knowledge and history. It’s beautifully Jewish.
