The first time I encountered the Brigid Alliance name, abut a month ago, I was half-listening to an NPR story about abortion resources, and I heard the name as “Bridge It.” Which made sense, I thought: The organization exists to cover the costs of travel, food, lodging, and childcare for women (aka “pregnant people”) seeking abortions in states where the procedure remains legal—to bridge the gap, in other words.
But no: It’s Brigid, one of the spellings of an ancient Irish personal name whose etymology translates to “the High One.” And there’s an interesting story behind that choice.
From the Brigid Alliance’s FAQ:
Who is Brigid?
In the 7th century, St. Brigid of Kildare helped a young woman who had broken her vow of chastity and became pregnant. According to legend, Brigid waved her hands over the woman’s belly and, “exercising the strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, caused the fetus to disappear without coming to birth, and without pain.”
Most sources place St. Brigid of Kildare in the fifth and sixth centuries CE. (It took about a century for her legend to be recorded.) Along with St. Patrick and St. Columba, she is one of Ireland’s three national saints; she is credited with founding a school of art and several churches as well as a monastery on the site of a shrine to a Celtic goddess also named Brigid.
Besides the name, I haven’t found a Catholic or Irish connection to the Brigid Alliance, which was founded by Odile Schalit, a social worker, in 2018; it’s a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in New York City with a rare 100% rating from Charity Navigator. Official Catholic sources now dispute the miraculous abortions attributed to Brigid or any other saintly lady. “There is no credible evidence that any Irish saints were involved in any form of abortion," an Irish scholar, Paul Byrne, told the Catholic News Agency in April 2018. (What sort of evidence would convince him?) A month later, in a landslide vote, the Republic of Ireland repealed that country’s 35-year-old abortion ban.
In the U.S., things are trending in a depressingly opposite direction. “Not surprisingly, demand for the group’s assistance is increasing,” the New York Times’s Michelle Goldberg wrote in an opinion piece about the Brigid Alliance published in December 2022, six months after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court:
Women typically get connected to the Brigid Alliance through either abortion clinics or abortion funds, organizations that help cover the price of the procedure for those who can’t afford it. Since Roe was overturned, referrals are up 50 percent. Often, Schalit told me, women are being forced to wait weeks or even a month for appointments because the clinics that are still standing are all booked up.
Watch an interview with Brigid Alliance co-founder Odile Schalit. If you’d like to help bridge the gap, you can make a recurring or one-time donation to the Brigid Alliance.
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