The group calling itself “Defend Girls Ohio” is being funded by thousands and thousands of {dollars} from main anti-abortion operatives based mostly in Virginia.
Ohioans are days away from voting on Subject 1, a constitutional modification that will defend abortion rights for Ohioans and block an excessive six-week abortion ban—that makes no exceptions for rape or incest—from going into impact.
One of many principal opponents to Ohio’s Subject 1 is a darkish cash outfit known as Defend Girls Ohio (PWO), a 501(c)(4) advocacy group below IRS guidelines. It was included shortly after the pro-abortion entry, grassroots-led effort by Ohioans efficiently collected the signatures wanted to get that modification on the November 2023 poll.
PWO has printed a listing of 48 coalition members casting what’s a smokescreen of a seemingly home-grown motion. Nonetheless, we now know that behind PWO’s efforts are the identical key nationwide anti-abortion operatives that helped overturn Roe, together with Leonard Leo and the Leonard Leo-affiliated anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Professional-Life America (SBA-PLA).
Hundreds of thousands have been funneled into PWO by teams tied to Leo, the lawyer who helped stack the U.S. Supreme Court docket with the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and federal constitutional protections for entry to abortion care.
PWO and PWO Motion have acquired $53 million in contributions, and 70 p.c of these donations are from Leo-affiliated teams.
The newest disclosures present that PWO/Motion have acquired $23 million from one among Leo’s core organizations, The Harmony Fund—which additionally makes use of the title Judicial Disaster Community and was launched in Virginia nearly twenty years in the past to assist pack the courts with anti-abortion judges.
Harmony’s most up-to-date money infusion to focus on Ohio voters—$3.1 million—was made in October.
SBA-PLA—one other Virginia-based group that has additionally acquired main funding from Leo’s Harmony Fund up to now—has given greater than $15 million to PWO and its affiliated PAC thus far. (Notably, one other arm of SBA-PLA, known as “Girls Converse Out,” was largely funded by one other anti-abortion actor: Illinois billionaire Dick UIhlein.)
PWO has different ties, past monetary, to SBA-PLA. In an announcement to The Guardian, SBA-PLA admitted to working with Defend Girls Ohio as a coalition member—although SBA-PLA is just not publicly listed as a member on PWO’s web site.
But, PWO has outsourced its discipline operations to SBA-PLA, which is organizing canvassers in Ohio, paying them to knock on doorways to get out the vote to try to defeat Subject 1. Michelle Ashley, SBA-PLA’s Ohio state director, is listed as the purpose of contact for PWO’s paid canvassing.
In different phrases, the coalition that’s making a veneer of “grassroots” anti-abortion momentum in Ohio is fueled by thousands and thousands of {dollars} tied to the person accountable for packing the U.S. Supreme Court docket with the very justices accountable for overturning Roe, which created this disaster in Ohio within the first place.
This concept of co-opting what it means to guard ladies and ladies … Don’t take our language and bastardize it into one thing that isn’t truly true.
Oriaku Njoku, the Nationwide Community of Abortion Funds
PWO can also be working carefully with a nationwide anti-abortion group that has unfold disinformation round abortion care and spent thousands and thousands to get rid of entry. PWO and a few of its members have unfold comparable disinformation round Subject 1 and abortion care.
That disinformation was on show lately throughout an hour-long debate on Subject 1 that aired on tv, in collaboration with the Columbus Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer and Spectrum Information.
Throughout that debate, a spokesperson for PWO, claimed but once more that the modification would strip away “parental rights”—a phrase used in recent times to incite anti-trans scaremongering.
As a coalition, a lot of PWO’s disinformation marketing campaign has centered across the argument that, if handed, Subject 1 would enable youngsters to transition with out parental consent—which isn’t right.
PWO has additionally prompt that below the modification, something coping with the human reproductive system might be understood as a “reproductive choice”—however authorized consultants have known as it a “stretch” to assert the modification contains gender-affirming care, when actually it’s about choices round copy.
PWO is ostensibly utilizing the GOP and far-right playbook of stoking anti-LGBTQ+ fears to detract from the devastation brought on by abortion bans for the reason that Supreme Court docket reversed Roe.
“[D]isinformation laden language and right-wing speaking factors […] infiltrating the abstract in regards to the poll [is] a transparent try to sway folks towards abortion entry and reproductive freedom,” mentioned Taryn Abbassian, affiliate analysis director for Reproductive Freedom for All (beforehand often known as NARAL Professional-Selection America).
PWO has additionally unfold disinformation round abortions later in being pregnant (they use the time period “late-term abortions,” a time period medical suppliers and reproductive well being researchers reject). Abortions on or after 21 weeks of being pregnant are carried out in lower than 2 p.c of abortion circumstances. Abortions occurring later in being pregnant are sometimes the results of medical situations that threaten the lifetime of a pregnant particular person or the viability of a fetus. They’ll additionally happen resulting from issue accessing abortion care earlier, within the first trimester—a rising actuality for an increasing number of People as 24 states have abortion bans in place or of their legislative pipeline since Roe was overturned.
PWO coalition members have additionally individually unfold disinformation round abortion care.
Cincinnati Proper to Life’s (CRL) web site includes a “Black Abortion” web page, which claims abortion is the main reason behind dying for Black Ohioans, asserting: “Black lives matter however to not abortionists. They revenue from killing black (sic) infants. The black (sic) group needs to be outraged.” (Additionally they publish such claims on native billboards.)
In accordance with the medical group, nevertheless, the main reason behind dying for Black People in Ohio and nationally is coronary heart illness. The appropriation of the BLM motion’s revolutionary phrase “Black Lives Matter” to argue towards abortion entry is notably jarring, provided that abortion bans trigger Black communities outsized hurt.
“The people who find themselves experiencing the brunt of anti-abortion laws are Black and brown of us, low-income communities … individuals who have already got points navigating a fractured healthcare system. After which we’re surrounding [their choice] in disgrace,” mentioned Oriaku Njoku, the manager director of the Nationwide Community of Abortion Funds. “Reproductive justice calls us to take a look at and to make use of an intersectional lens … [W]e have to take a look at environmental justice, financial justice, racial justice.”
“This concept of co-opting what it means to guard ladies and ladies, to guard gender nonconforming and gender expansive folks, that’s our work,” Njoku continued. “Don’t take our language and bastardize it into one thing that isn’t truly true.”
Different disinformation claims from PWO members embody:
Amidst the fog of such disinformation, one factor that’s crystal clear is that the group calling itself “Defend Girls Ohio” is being funded by thousands and thousands of {dollars} from main anti-abortion operatives based mostly in Virginia. And PWO, together with a few of its coalition members, has unfold an array of disinformation about Subject 1 and abortion care throughout its costly PR marketing campaign over the previous few months.
On Nov. 7, the U.S. will see if the disinformation being funded by out-of-state anti-abortion forces succeeds in getting Ohioans to vote towards their rights and restrict their freedom to decide on what’s finest for them and their households—or if the motion of Ohioans who efficiently put this challenge on the poll will prevail and create a basis for reproductive justice efforts transferring ahead.
True North’s Lisa Graves contributed to this report.
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