London anti-abortion march fuelled by US ‘hate group’

Over half of speakers on London’s March for Life’s programme have links with US Christian right group Alliance Defending Freedom.

By Alice McCool
Sep 5, 2025

A major anti-abortion march taking place in London this week is being heavily influenced by US Christian right group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), raising concerns about the import of anti-gender fundamentalism to the UK.

Good Law Project can reveal that over half of the speakers in London’s March for Life 2025 itinerary have direct links to ADF, an Arizona-based Christian legal organisation that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group”.

Continued: https://goodlawproject.org/london-anti-abortion-march-fuelled-by-us-hate-group/

Three years after Alabama’s abortion ban, many must make tiring trips for care

July 11, 2025
Rhonda Sonnenberg

About every other day in Alabama, a woman suspecting she is pregnant seeks abortion counseling at an Alabama clinic without knowing how far into the pregnancy she is. She may be a mother with three young children at home. She might be in an abusive relationship. Or perhaps she is a student who someday wants children — just not now.

Once a clinic nurse determines the approximate stage of the pregnancy, she will refer the patient to an out-of-state abortion facility where the procedure is still legal. Meanwhile, staff at the Birmingham-based Yellowhammer Fund would work to guarantee a financial contribution for her travel, hotel and child care costs, if necessary, and cobble together funding for the abortion care from additional funding sources. Yellowhammer’s work is a lifeline for pregnant people in Alabama, providing grassroots support and resources when they need it most.

Continued: https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/alabama-abortion-ban-assistance/

US anti‑abortion cash floods UK free speech frontlines

Democracy for Sale investigation finds US anti‑abortion lawyer funding Toby Young’s Free Speech Union, while Alliance Defending Freedom’s UK spending soars.

May 31, 2025
By Peter Geoghegan and Max Colbert

Nigel Farage has often described himself as ‘pro-choice’ - but this week the Reform leader declared that plans to decriminalise abortion up to 24 weeks are “utterly ludicrous”.

Farage’s comments were striking. Not least as the abortion proposals have been backed by a cross-party group of MPs. But the Reform leader is not the only figure on the political right who seems to have a growing interest in Britain’s abortion laws.

Continued: https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/us-antiabortion-cash-floods-uk-free-speech-union-adf

‘We’re ready to fight’: activists brace as US anti-rights figures descend on Africa

Ultra-conservative campaigners fly in for ‘family values’ conferences to share tactics with African allies who oppose abortion and LGBTQ+ rights

Jessie Williams
Fri 9 May 2025

Advocates for sexual, reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights in Africa are bracing themselves for an influx of some of the most powerful, ultra-conservative campaigners from the US, Poland, Switzerland and the Netherlands over the coming months.

The prominent campaigners, who all oppose abortion, transgender and LGBTQ+ rights, and are against sexuality education, are due to speak at a series of conferences focused on African “family values” and “national sovereignty”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/may/09/africa-family-values-anti-rights-conferences-conservative-christian-abortion-lgbtq-gender-uganda-kenya-rwanda

09.05.2025

Commentary

Africa Christian Professionals Forum

Alliance Defending Freedom

Ann Kioko

Anti-Homosexuality Act

Austin Ruse

Bettina Roska

Center for Family and Human Rights

Christian Council International

CitizenGO

Fatima Maada Bio

Henk Jan van Schothorst

Joy Asasira

Julius Maada Bio

MSI Reproductive Choices

National Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission

Nelly Munyasia

Okwara Masafu

Pan-African Conference on Family Values

Purposeful

Ramatu Bangura

Reproductive Health Network Kenya

Saoyo Tabitha Griffith

Sarah Shaw

Sharon Slater

Southern Poverty Law Center

Women’s Probono Initiative

A tale of two conferences: women against women as ‘poison of patriarchy’ returns and abortion fight intensifies

Last week, anti-choice campaigners emboldened by current US politics met in New York at the same time as UN delegates gathered to address the widespread inequalities women face. The battle to protect rights has never felt more urgent

Isabel Choat in New York, The Guardian
Sat 22 Mar 2025

In a meeting room on the 27th floor of a swish Manhattan hotel, Denise Mountenay is telling the audience that the right to abortion is “Nazi thinking.” Mountenay regrets her own abortions, and says she has been called by God to spread the word that she and other women “were lied to, deceived, pressured into making the most horrible choice: to choose death instead of life”.

She goes on to list reasons why abortion is “not a safe procedure. [That’s what] they want woman to think – that is a lie.” Many of her claims, including that abortion leads to breast cancer, have been thoroughly disproved by scientific studies.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/mar/22/women-rights-un-anti-abortion-choice-poison-of-patriarchy-returns

22.03.2025

Commentary

69th Commission on the Status of Women

anti-choice bullshit

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice deception

Campaign Life Coalition

International Planned Parenthood Federation

MSI Reproductive Choices

Nelly Munyasia

Oxfam

Pan-African Conference on Family Values

Project 2025

Richard and Helen DeVos Centre for Life

sexual and reproductive health and rights

Sima Bahous

Southern Poverty Law Center

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/

22.02.2024

Commentary

Alliance Defending Freedom

anti-choice and anti-trans

anti-choice bigotry

Chrissy Stroop

Nex Benedict

Southern Poverty Law Center

‘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