Project 2025 May 8th Update

[Celerity]

This week we look at how Project 2025’s Alliance Defending Freedom is promoting its anti-abortion agenda in the UK, how dark money is funding Project 2025’s authoritarian agenda, and how Project 2025’s anti-LGBTQ+ plans are being implemented in Tennessee.

https://globalextremism.org/post/project-2025-may-8th-update/



Project 2025 Organization Takes The Battle Over Abortion Rights To The UK

In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s seismic decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, the shockwaves are being felt far beyond American borders. The ruling seems to have emboldened the U.S. anti-abortion movement to intensify its efforts to roll back reproductive rights internationally, with the UK emerging as an important battleground, as Truthout reported. A recent vote in the British Parliament highlighted how American-style anti-abortion tactics and rhetoric are being exported across the pond. MPs voted down an amendment from Labour’s Stella Creasy that would have allowed women in England to permanently access abortion pills by mail, as was temporarily allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anti-choice groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) celebrated this defeat as a major win in their quest to dismantle abortion access. However, a 2023 poll showed that nearly 90 percent of Britons describe themselves as pro-choice.

What’s particularly concerning is how intertwined the U.S. and UK anti-abortion movements have become in recent years. ADF in particular has been working hand-in-glove with its British counterparts. They’ve exported model legislation, funding, strategic guidance, and more to organizations in the UK aiming to chip away at abortion rights. ADF’s UK campaigns are based on successful strategies imported from U.S. anti-abortion groups. Although the UK is majority pro-choice and abortions are legal, nevertheless the anti-abortion movement is making inroads in the UK, manipulating social media and television appearances to make their movement seem larger than it is. These are million-dollar campaigns with US groups exporting their strategies to Europe for a global impact. Some of their campaigns include the clip posted to YouTube below, encouraging anti-abortion supporters to pray silently outside abortion providers’ offices.



“As if the US anti-abortion movement didn’t already have sufficient momentum, the Dobbs’ decision turbo-charged their motivation and reach,” Gillian Kane, the director of policy and advocacy research at the pro-choice, non-governmental organization Ipas, told openDemocracy. “There are veteran organizations continuing their line of work, but also traditionally domestic-focused groups… see an opportunity to dip their toes in these crowded international waters.” From 2017 to 2022, the last year tax records for ADF are available, its foreign expenditures have been $31 million, with the vast majority of that being spent on European anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns. Details as to which organizations were recipients are not required to be disclosed by the IRS, only the region where funds are sent.

ADF is also cozying up to British politicians, including MP Fiona Bruce, Special Envoy on Freedom of Religion of Belief, who has attended several ADF events, at least one of which had travel and expenses paid.

Part of what makes this international alliance so formidable is their sophisticated tactics that go beyond the usual emotional pleas to “protect the unborn.” These groups have become experts at co-opting progressive language around human rights, equality, and justice to reframe the entire issue as one about defending the civil liberties of fetuses. ADF International promotional materials boast of “35 victories before the European Court of Human Rights.” They’ve also deliberately rebranded and portrayed themselves as modern women’s rights groups – despite having the goal of stripping women of bodily autonomy. This insidious rhetorical repackaging has allowed the anti-abortion movement to make alarming inroads overseas. American-style draconian abortion bans such as those proposed and advocated for in Project 2025 could eventually take root on British soil as this “cultural war” escalates globally.

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