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.
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.
In February, JD Vance - vice-president to Farage’s ‘friend’ Donald Trump - used his notorious Munich Security Conference speech to denounce the UK and Scottish governments for restricting protests outside abortion clinics.
Two months later the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor—created in the 1970s to “advance democracy around the world”—rebuked the UK after a judge found campaigner Livia Tossici‑Bolt guilty of breaching a “buffer zone” outside a Bournemouth clinic.
Now, Democracy for Sale can reveal that American anti‑abortion activists are backing up their rhetoric with major donations in the UK.
In response to our findings, politicians and campaigners warned the government about the “obvious danger” of “importing America's toxic far right politics” into Britain.
Among those who have received funding from American anti-abortionists is Tory peer Toby Young’s Free Speech Union (FSU), which took $97,930 from a charity run by US anti-abortion lawyer Zachary Kester.
Kester is general counsel to Students for Life, a campus group whose mission is to “recruit, train and mobilise the pro‑life generation to abolish abortion” and whose president declared in January that “with President Trump back in office, pro‑life Americans can rest easier”.
Kester is also president and CEO of Fiscal Sponsorship Allies Inc, which made the grant of $97,930 to the United States Free Speech Union to support “free speech” in 2021, US filings show. The Free Speech Union’s US arm—on whose board Young sat— has since been dissolved.
In the UK, the Free Speech Union has been critical of bans on buffer zone protests. In an interview with Times Radio’s Rod Liddle in April, Young said that while FSU had “never taken on the case of an anti‑abortion protester” that was only because “they’re extremely well defended already by organisations like ADF International”.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is one of the world’s most influential anti‑abortion organisations. It often supports Students for Life in legal cases and has funded another Kester-run group, Charitable Allies, to support its “sanctity of life” work.
Based in the US, ADF was founded in 1994 by conservative Christian leaders and was pivotal in overturning Roe v. Wade. The Southern Poverty Law Center brands it a hate group, while satirist John Oliver says it puts “a misleadingly friendly face on an utterly hateful ideology”. (ADF rejects these labels and says the SPLC is a politically partisan and fundraising driven organisation).
What is undeniable is that ADF’s British branch, ADF International (UK), has dramatically ramped up its spending. Although the charity, which trades as ‘ADF UK’ based in Westminster, does not disclose its donors, its accounts show “financial support in the form of unrestricted donations from Alliance Defending Freedom, a linked charity in the US”.
That support has jumped more than 300 % in five years. In 2020, ADF International (UK) received £324,000 in “ADF support”; by 2024 that had risen to £1.1 million of a total £1.3 million income. The donations “do not require repayment,” according to company accounts.
The extra cash has coincided with a sharp expansion of the ADF’s presence in Britain. It now regularly represents buffer‑zone protesters, including Tossici‑Bolt, lobbies Westminster, attends the all‑party parliamentary group on Freedom of Religion or Belief, briefs MPs and officials - and quotes Nigel Farage approvingly in its press releases.
Tellingly, while ADF International (UK)’s overall income rose last year, public donations fell from £200,000 in 2023 to £117,000 in 2024.
ADF has major allies in Trump world, including House Speaker—and former ADF lawyer—Mike Johnson. The group also applauded the president’s flood of executive orders.
ADF funding in the US, however, is famously opaque. It relies heavily on donor‑advised funds (DAFs), a vehicle that lets donors give millions anonymously.
Since 2012 it has collected more than $133 million from the National Christian Charitable Foundation and $100 million from Servant Foundation—both DAFs accused of funnelling dark money to far‑right causes.
Other ADF backers include Shell USA Company Foundation and the Heritage Foundation, architect of Project 2025. We also found that ADF donors include prominent American conservative funders such as Charles Koch and the Morgan Stanley Foundation who have also bankrolled the ‘Tufton Street’ network of free-market think‑tanks clustered around Westminster.
Last year Democracy for Sale revealed that Tufton Street donors had poured more than $45 million into Trump and Republican campaigns. (Incidentally, the Charity Commission is now investigating the Institute of Economic Affairs over “perceptions of political bias”.)
Because ADF hides its donors, it's unclear who is funding its UK efforts—a serious concern, say campaigners and politicians.
“There’s already too much big money distorting UK politics through party donations. This ‘dark money’ exposed by Democracy for Sale deepens the inequality of arms and undermines a diverse, healthy political culture,” said Natalie Bennett, former Green Party leader and member of the House of Lords.
She added that "the response from the government unfortunately fails to in any substantive way engage with the obvious danger importing America's toxic far right politics presents to our society.” .
Chiara Capraro, gender justice director at Amnesty International UK, called for greater scrutiny of US anti-abortion funding in Britain. “ADF and similar groups reframe rights issues as moral debates, but what we are really talking about is the right to healthcare and freedom from discrimination – fundamental rights that everyone is entitled to and deserves,” she said.
Judith Orr, vice-chair of Abortion Rights, warned that US setbacks on reproductive rights have emboldened UK anti-abortion activists.
Abortion should be removed from criminal law entirely “to ensure that no politician tries to replicate the US and take back rights that have been hard‑fought for through generations”, Orr said.
The Free Speech Union, Toby Young, Alliance Defending Freedom and Zachary Kester did not respond to requests for comment.
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Here’s a big date for the diary: this Tuesday (June 3) at 16.00PM BST I (Peter) will be in conversation live with the brilliant American journalist Amy Westervelt talking about Silicon Valley, technofascism and the assault on democracy.
Amy is the founder of the podcast network Critical Frequency and hosts the popular podcast Drilled, which has been downloaded more than a million times. We will be delving into the frankly terrifying world of the ‘network state’, why Trump really wants Greenland and asking how, as tech oligarchs consolidate power and authoritarian regimes weaponise the internet, can democracy survive the algorithm age?
With Nigel Farage and Reform announcing that they’ll accept political donations in money launderers’ favourite cryptocurrency and Peter Thiel plugged into the Trump mainframe, this conversation has never been more urgent.
Click here at 16.00PM BST on Tuesday to join. See you there!
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We've only made 50 of these tokens, though, so do move quickly
US anti-abortion groups giving Brits money to control our lives is tantamount to a take over of our national identity. Frankly with the internet being available to most of us the need for cash should be irrelevant. If a party or group wants us to know something they should just type it out and we will choose to believe them or not!
The money is actually being used to get phycological experts to put the messages out in a form that resonates with people. I call them Brain Washers! I don't like anybody playing with my understanding of an issue by lying to my face that green is actually cherry red. People have a point of view that may not be everybody's but if you can't find a legitimate argument to counter it then so be it. We are human beings with flaws so if the talking heads, pundits and others told the truth we can deal with it. Thanks for for the info Peter. I believe you want to inform not brain wash us. I figured that out all by myself. I'm a fucking genius!
The infiltration into UK politics by American illicite funding should be criminalized.