How the US Christian Right Funds Anti-Abortion Activities Abroad

Right-wing US groups have spotted an opportunity to ramp up their activities since Roe v. Wade’s repeal.

by KATY FALLON, pictures by JNO.SKINNER
MARCH 13, 2024

In April 2023, Janet K. Museveni, Uganda’s first lady, published a photo on social media that rang serious alarm bells for advocates of reproductive and LGBTQ rights. The photo sparked concern because of a specific person in it: Sharon Slater, who heads the US nonprofit Family Watch International. The organization describes its work as “strengthening the family,” but the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has designated it as a hate group for its efforts to “further anti-LBGT and anti-choice stances.”

The SPLC is one of several rights groups and monitors that have called attention to the work of Slater and Family Watch International. More worrisome still, the photo of Museveni and Slater came shortly after Uganda’s parliament passed harsh anti-gay legislation that allows for a life-sentence for adults convicted of engaging in consensual, same-sex intercourse. Family Watch International did not reply to a request for comment, but the group has previously denied claims it had lobbied or advocated for the bill.

Continued: https://inkstickmedia.com/how-the-us-christian-right-funds-anti-abortion-activities-abroad/


Why the anti-trans movement is inseparable from the anti-abortion movement

The transphobes who put a target on the back of Nex Benedict, who was beaten to death, are a threat to everyone

Chrissy Stroop
22 February 2024

In the United States, as in the United Kingdom, there are some self-identified liberals and leftists who insist on pitting cisgender women’s rights against trans rights, baselessly arguing that draconian discrimination against transgender people is necessary to “protect women and girls”.

As a transgender American woman, the willingness of such people to partner with right-wingers to put a target on my back is bewildering and painful. The fact is, after all, that trans people suffer violence disproportionately. Just this month, in fact, a non-binary, Native American teenager, Nex Benedict, was beaten to death by other students in a school bathroom in Oklahoma, and the school administration didn’t even call an ambulance to try to save them.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/trans-rights-abortion-rights-america-adf-chrissy-stroop-nex-benedict/


‘Dark money’ fuelling ‘retrograde’ anti-abortion activity in UK

By Joshua Askew
21/11/2023

"We should all be troubled that they [US anti-abortion groups] seem to be turning their fire on the UK," one organisation warned.

“Dark money” has surged into UK anti-abortion groups in recent years, Euronews has learnt, aiding controversial activism and raising questions about overseas political influence inside the country.

According to data shared with Euronews by the Good Law Project, "shadowy" funds - where the source is obscured and not fully disclosed - nearly doubled for the UK branch of the "hate group" Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) from 2020 to 2022.

Continued:  https://www.euronews.com/2023/11/21/dark-money-funding-retrograde-anti-abortion-activity-in-uk


An Alabama woman was imprisoned for ‘endangering’ her fetus. She gave birth in a jail shower

Exclusive: Ashley Caswell, one of a growing number of jailed pregnant women in Etowah county, is suing officials after she was denied care

Sam Levin in Los Angeles
Fri 13 Oct 2023

In March 2021, sheriffs in Etowah county, Alabama, arrested Ashley Caswell on accusations that she’d tested positive for methamphetamine while pregnant and was “endangering” her fetus.

Caswell, who was two months pregnant at the time, became one of a growing number of women imprisoned in the county in the name of protecting their “unborn children”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/13/alabama-pregnant-woman-jail-lawsuit


This U.S.-based ‘hate group’ is using a shadowy network of lawyers and doctors to infiltrate Canada

The Alliance Defending Freedom has deep and surprising connections in Ottawa

By Kevin Maimann
August 9, 2023

A right-wing Christian organization behind successful efforts to roll back LGBTQ2S+ and abortion rights in the U.S. has been working in Canada for years. And while it has racked up some “successes” in this country, it’s near impossible to tell what the group is up to because of Canada’s lax finance laws, leading to calls for greater transparency.

The non-profit Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has been a central player in efforts to limit the rights of women, queer and trans people in the U.S. since the 1990s. The organization has been so pervasive and effective in its campaigns to malign LGBTQ2S+ people that it was classified as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The ADF has intervened in numerous high-profile court cases including the recent Supreme Court case 303 Creative, which limited the purview of anti-discrimination legislation, and Dobbs earlier this year, which overturned the right to abortion in the U.S. The ADF is on a roll, with no sign of slowing down. The Guardian reported in June the ADF plans to use “model legislation” and lawsuits to overturn same-sex marriage, enact a total abortion ban and strip away trans rights in the U.S.

Continued:  https://xtramagazine.com/power/politics/alliance-defending-freedom-adf-hate-group-canada-gerald-chipeur-255467


The Britons and Americans trying to reverse abortion rights in Africa

British academic Calum Miller attacked the legalisation of abortion in an Ethiopian medical journal and said it could have contributed to maternal deaths

By Michael Day, Chief Foreign Commentator
July 16, 2023

The US Supreme Court’s decision last year to sweep away a woman’s right to an abortion has set back civil liberties in America by several decades. But the culture wars that threaten Americans’ rights are also having a knock-on effect – and a potentially far deadlier one – thousands of miles away.

Sub-Saharan Africa already has the highest rate of unsafe abortions and unintended pregnancies in the world. Now health workers say right-wing Catholic groups in the US are using the Supreme Court ruling to redouble their efforts to deny women in some of the world’s poorest countries the right to safe terminations.

Continued: https://inews.co.uk/news/world/the-britons-and-americans-trying-to-reverse-abortion-rights-in-africa-2461329


After fall of Roe, emboldened religious conservatives lobby to restrict abortion in Africa

BY CARA ANNA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 1, 2023

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Nowhere in the world has a higher rate of unsafe abortions or unintended pregnancies than sub-Saharan Africa, where women often face scorn for becoming pregnant before marriage.

Efforts to legalize and make abortions safer in Africa were shaken when the U.S. Supreme Court ended the national right to an abortion a year ago. Within days, Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio declared that his government would decriminalize abortion “at a time when sexual and reproductive health rights for women are being either overturned or threatened.”

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/africa-abortion-supreme-court-limits-9b02bb07cc50967804fb84704891baf7


SUPREME COURT’S ABORTION RULING DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTS BLACK PEOPLE WITH LOW INCOMES IN THE DEEP SOUTH

May 05, 2023
Rhonda Sonnenberg

Even before Alauni took an at-home pregnancy test just four weeks after a single instance of unplanned sexual activity, she knew it would be positive.

The 24-year-old Texas college student – a single, working mother of three children under the age of 6, one of whom is autistic – immediately felt the familiar signs of her pregnancies. She had intended to buy the Plan B “morning after” pill, but was in the process of moving to another city and hadn’t yet secured new housing.

Continued: https://www.splcenter.org/news/2023/05/05/supreme-courts-abortion-ruling-affects-black-people-low-incomes


The right is stealthily working to remove Americans’ access to abortion medication

A federal judge is poised to restrict mifepristone – even though the drug has been safely and effectively used in the US for more than 20 years

Moira Donegan
Thu 16 Mar 2023

This week a Republican-appointed federal judge weighed whether to grant an injunction that could remove mifepristone, the drug used in most American abortions, from the market nationwide. And the hearing almost happened in secret.

US district court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk had initially planned to keep Wednesday’s hearing in the case – in which a group of rightwing anti-abortion groups are suing the FDA to reverse its 20-year-old approval of mifepristone – quiet. In a conference call with lawyers for the anti-choice groups and the Department of Justice, Kacsmaryk asked attorneys not to disclose the existence of the hearing (“This is not a gag order,” he said repeatedly), and said that the event would only be made public late on Tuesday to minimize popular awareness. “It may even be after business hours.” The judge’s courtroom in Amarillo, Texas, is hours away from any major city. It was only because of a press leak that the hearing was known to the public at all.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/16/the-right-is-stealthily-working-to-remove-americans-access-to-abortion-medication  


How White Nationalists Are Hijacking the Anti-Abortion Movement

The growing overlap between anti-abortion activism and far-right extremism has started to spill into the real world in high-profile ways.

By Tess Owen and Carter Sherman
Feb 3, 2022

On New Year’s Eve, a fire ripped through the last Planned Parenthood in East Tennessee, turning the Knoxville abortion clinic into a hunk of rubble. As the ruins smoldered, some anti-abortion activists and members of the far-right celebrated online.

A Telegram meme account affiliated with the Proud Boys, a far-right street-fighting gang, responded to the literal fire with a string of fire emojis. “Aww, what a shame,” they wrote. “That will set their genocidal plans and baby parts market back for months.”

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7n4bq/white-nationalist-anti-abortion-movement