Dark Money Fuels Attacks on Abortion Rights Worldwide

An investigation by media company openDemocracy found Friday that the black money groups who are driving the far-right attack on reproductive freedoms in the United States have also spent at least $ 28 million on efforts to promote women’s rights and LGBTQ + in recent years -Restrict people worldwide.

The new analysis shows that prominent anti-abortion groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Federalist Society, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family and Heartbeat International were “involved in recent efforts to restrict reproductive rights in Europe and Latin America”.

“The anti-election movement not only has a lot of money, it also has a plan and the determination.”

The organizations form what openDemocracy calls “the global” dark money “empire of the Christian right-wing US,” which is exporting its legal strategy, army of lawyers and resources abroad to prevent and reverse international advances in access to abortion close.

ADF, a far-right Christian legal group with ties to Judge Amy Coney Barrett, has spent years laying the groundwork for Mississippi’s draconian abortion ban in the heart of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to lay a Supreme Court case that could jeopardize reproductive freedoms in the US

But ADF’s influence extends well beyond its home country. According to openDemocracy, the organization, whose global arm is called ADF International, spent $ 15.3 million between 2016 and 2019 on efforts to reduce abortion rights abroad.

“The European offices of ACLJ and ADF have intervened in dozens of European legal cases against sexual and reproductive rights,” notes the outlet. “Last year the Polish Constitutional Court voted to ban abortion for fetal defects. [ACLJ] Arguments presented for the new restrictions condemned by the Council of Europe as a grave ‘human rights violation’. “

“The European branch of ACLJ also intervened for the first time at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights,” states openDemocracy. “The government of El Salvador, where abortion is illegal under all circumstances, has been charged with the imprisonment and death of a woman who has miscarried.”

As for the Federal Society, of which all six current judges of the right-wing Supreme Court are either current or former members, “Europe was the main target of overseas spending,” says openDemocracy.

“Europeans are too naive to believe that achievements in women’s rights and sexual and reproductive health are irreversible,” Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch MEP, told the outlet. “The anti-election movement not only has a lot of money, it also has a plan and the determination. Europe should wake up, and it should wake up quickly.”

While far-right groups have largely managed to hide their funding sources from the public under US tax law, openDemocracy examined “financial information disclosed by grantors,” and showed that the National Christian Foundation (NCF) and Fidelity Charitable 93 US $ million donated to the organizations between 2016 and 2020.

Sexuality Policy Watch’s feminist researcher Sonia Corrêa said the report by openDemocracy “revisits the long-standing organic links between anti-abortion forces in the US and Latin America.”

Neil Datta, secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, similarly argued that the results “continue to demonstrate the growing trend of religious extremists to forge cross-border alliances to … disintegrate the fabric of human rights protection.”

In a comment for the New York Times Thursday, Mary Fitzgerald of openDemocracy argued that if the US Supreme Court upholds the Mississippi abortion ban and Roe v. Wade undercuts that the nation will “join a small cadre of increasingly authoritarian countries that have become”. more restrictive on abortions in recent years. “

Fitzgerald went on to give specific examples:

Poland’s Constitutional Court ruled on a retrospective abortion ban last year, effectively banning abortion in all cases except rape, incest, or threat to the mother’s life or health after the ruling Law and Justice party occupied the court.

Hungary’s Viktor Orban has his talks on “family values” and a 2016 United Nations report criticized the country for hindering access to abortion.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia has just joined the misleadingly titled Geneva Consensus Declaration: a document co-sponsored and signed by the United States under the Trump administration with repressive governments such as Jair Bolsonaros Brazil, Mr. Orbans Hungary, Abdel Fattah el-Sisis Egypt more of the world’s most repressive regimes from Saudi Arabia to Uganda. (President Biden announced the withdrawal of the United States in January.) The authors of the statement also claim that there is no international right to abortion.

“Later this month, President Biden will host the Summit on Democracy, with an emphasis on promoting human rights around the world,” noted Fitzgerald. “But while US courts continue to dismantle fundamental rights in countless other modern democracies, the most pressing question must be: How can democracy do its job at home when only half of the population are granted full human rights?”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/03/global-empire-us-christian-right-dark-money-fuels-attacks-abortion-rights-worldwide