For decades, antiabortion extremists and their ultra wealthy benefactors have deployed every lever of power in their control to stop people from accessing abortion healthcare—but even more brazenly since the Roberts Court overturned Roe. But in the ongoing election, the fate of abortion healthcare access in multiple states hangs in the balance.
The fights over upcoming ballot initiatives provide insight into just how many levers of power are at the disposal of antiabortion powerbroker Leonard Leo—the man who engineered the right-wing takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court that in turn reversed Roe—and his network.
While Leo-led groups may not be visibly dropping millions into this fight like they did in Ohio and Kansas last year, the antiabortion network he helms is actively opposing state abortion ballot initiatives—all part of a larger effort in the fight to eliminate what is left of abortion access in this country.
Leo’s Influence on Florida’s Fight for Abortion Healthcare Access
Well before the fight to get the initiative on the ballot, Students for Life of America (SFLA)—a group with a long history of taking extreme antiabortion positions, including opposing contraception access—lobbied for Florida’s near-total abortion ban while Leo was still chairman of the board. (He is no longer officially on the board, according to their latest IRS filing.)
The same year the group lobbied for Florida’s abortion ban, they received funding from “donor-advised funds” (DAFs) like Vanguard, Schwab and Fidelity, totaling just over $1 million. Leo’s network has increasingly relied on DAFs to pass money between groups in his network while shielding the true source of the funds. Notably, Leo’s Marble Freedom Trust gave Schwab Charitable Fund over $153 million in 2021-2022, although there is no direct proof those funds or significant funds were directed by Leo to SFLA because DAFs help obfuscate who the original donors are.
The first hurdle to getting Amendment 4 on the ballot was the right-wing majority on the state Supreme Court that Leo helped to install. Leo was called in by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) just before the latter’s 2019 gubernatorial inauguration to form a “secretive panel” to flip the state Supreme Court’s majority to the right—just like he did for Trump with the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case challenging the language used on the initiative was brought forward by Attorney General Ashley Moody, who is a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which helps adherents like Moody get elected and reelected through direct and indirect spending. The largest donor to RAGA has been Leonard Leo’s Concord Fund. Notably, RAGA also directly contributed $100,000 to Moody’s re-election campaign in 2021.
Montana RAGA AG Austin Knudsen—whose law license has just recently been recommended for suspension due to attorney misconduct complaints filed in 2021—also deployed the ambiguous language tactic to try and keep the initiative off the ballot in his state. That tactic involves using the power of the AG’s office to impose language that could confuse voters and obscure the purpose of a citizen initiative to depress votes for ballot measures the AG opposes.
RAGA’s veritable legal army of far-right attorneys general help Leo implement his antiabortion agenda in other ways, too. RAGA-member attorneys general, like Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, are especially active in pushing for and enforcing oppressive abortion bans.
The antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which has received millions from Leonard Leo’s network over the years, also filed a brief in support of Moody’s argument, as did Florida Voters Against Extremism (FVAE).
FVAE is a political action committee created for the sole purpose of opposing Florida’s Amendment 4. Created on October 30, 2023, the group somehow managed to file an amicus brief the very next day, despite purportedly not receiving contributions until 2024, according to campaign finance disclosures. Liberty Counsel, a 501(c)(3) Southern Poverty Law Center-designated “hate group,” and another group opposing Florida’s abortion amendment, represented FVAE in the brief. Liberty Counsel’s founder and chairman Mathew Staver (the attorney listed on FVAE’s brief) sits on the board of the Council for National Policy (CNP), alongside Leonard Leo.
The creation of FVAE signaled that the antiabortion movement was still going to use the primary tactic deployed in Ohio against Issue 1 last year: the use of disposable political action committees and front groups to create a veneer of grassroots antiabortion fervor, and make available a vehicle to funnel in as much money as they can to defeat ballot initiatives.
The Leo Allies Fighting Against Abortion Ballot Initiatives
Close Leo allies are some of the biggest donors spending to oppose abortion ballot initiatives in individual states this cycle via the creation of new PACs.
John Sauer, a former solicitor general of Missouri and Trump’s attorney who made headlines when he declared the president would be immune from prosecution for political assassinations, has been a major backer of the opposition to the ballot initiative in Missouri. Sauer, who has a long antiabortion history, has given $777,000 to various PACs trying to defeat Missouri’s abortion ballot initiative, including $157,000 to a newly formed PAC “Vote No on 3.”
This PAC’s deputy treasurer is James C. Thomas III, a Missouri political operative who was implicated in a dark money scheme in 2017. Notably, the largest donation to “Vote No on 3” is from Missouri Right to Life PAC (MRTL) at $200,000. Sauer has given MRTL’s PAC $500,000 since March of this year.
Sauer’s ties to Leo are numerous. He has been an attorney for the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a far-right dark money group that has received funding from the Leo network and where Leo has helped steer the group as a member of its board. From 2017-2022, EPPC received $3,268,000 all from Leo’s The 85 fund. Similarly, Sauer has acted as a contributor and frequent speaker for the Federalist Society, which Leo has long helped lead. Sauer donated to it, too.
Sauer was also a silver level sponsor ($25,000) alongside Leonard Leo at an exclusive 2018 GMU law school dinner where the school unveiled a statue of Scalia for whom the law school was renamed after a $30 million deal brokered by Leo in 2016.
Sauer has also been uncovered as a member of the secretive Christian nationalist group Council for National Policy with Leo and FVAE’s Staver.
Raymond Ruddy, who has sat on the Students For Life of America board with Leo and has a long history of opposing abortion access, also gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat ballot initiatives in Missouri and Arkansas.
Marlene Ricketts, of the TD Ameritrade fortune, has given $4 million to defeat the abortion ballot initiative in Nebraska, where her son, Pete Ricketts, is a U.S. Senator. Of that money, $3 million was just disclosed in recent filings. Senator Ricketts himself has given over $1.1 million to oppose abortion access in Nebraska. The Ricketts have financial ties to Leo’s Judicial Crisis Network, too.
In addition to throwing their financial weight, Leo’s allies also pulled legal levers in Missouri and Nebraska to keep abortion access off the ballot.
In the ninth hour, a right-wing legal group called the Thomas More Society, which played a key role in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, filed lawsuits in Nebraska and Missouri to keep Nebraskans and Missourians from voting on abortion access.
According to its most recent IRS filing, one of its highest paid contractors is Consovoy McCarthy PLLC. One of Consovoy McCarthy’s partners is Tyler Green–one of only three trustees listed for the Leo-controlled Marble Freedom Trust, which was valued at over $1 billion dollars as of 2022, but which was worth $1.6 billion in 2021, when antiabortion billionaire Barre Seid fully transferred that fortune to Leo.
Leo-Tied National Antiabortion Groups Attacking Abortion Ballot Initiatives on the Ground
National antiabortion groups with ties to Leo, like Students for Life of America and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, have also set up PACs in multiple states where abortion is on the ballot. These groups are also canvassing, phone banking, running ads and helping sow distrust in the ballot signature collection process in certain states.
- Convincing Trump to vote “no” on Amendment 4, after Trump briefly back-peddled on his antiabortion position and Florida’s six-week abortion ban for fear of losing the support of Florida voters, despite his bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade.
- Knocking on thousands of doors in Florida, Arizona, Nebraska, Nevada, Montana and Missouri.
Students for Life of America and its action arm have engaged in the following efforts against access to abortion healthcare this election cycle:
- Launching a “Vote NO on 4” Florida billboard truck tour that visited multiple Florida college and university campuses to target students and young voters.
- Launching an eight-week billboard campaign called “Almost Aborted.”
- Peddling its “Abortion Free Cities” agenda in states, claiming that in August its team members went door knocking in Miami, attended church meetings, and gave a presentation to an antiabortion coalition. The team also handed out information on unregulated pregnancy centers in St. Louis.
- Engaging in the tactic questioning the legal validity of signatures gathered to ensure that abortion amendments appear on the ballot in Arizona. In that case, however, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes certified the estimated 577,971 signatures were valid and easily surpassed the threshold to make the ballot.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s efforts against abortion healthcare this election cycle include:
- Announcing a $92 million dollar ground game, with a focus on swing states like Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Montana and Georgia. That’s triple the amount of revenue it reported in 2022. Last year, Leo’s Concord Fund gave SBA-PLA $8.8 million (more recent figures are not available yet).
- Meeting with Republican Nebraska Governor Jim Pilsen and local leaders of unregulated pregnancy centers to discuss strategy regarding the state’s two abortion-ballot initiatives.
- Spending $2 million on ads targeting Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as ads attacking Montana U.S. Senator Jon Tester and Ohio U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown for their pro-choice stances. The group also launched a $500,000 outrageously blaming pro-choice people for the deaths of two Georgia women—Candi Miller and Amber Nicole Thurman–which occurred as a result of doctors delaying life-saving reproductive care for the women under the state’s regressive abortion ban.
- Crafting antiabortion talking points for “GOP candidates, lawmakers and leaders,” including disinformation Americans witnessed Trump use in the presidential debate against VP Harris.
It is now well-established that the antiabortion movement that Leo helps fuel is not backing down from the fight to eliminate abortion access entirely. After already eliminating our constitutionally-protected freedoms to choose what we do with our bodies and determine our reproductive futures, Leo and his network are continuing to come for abortion healthcare at the state level, but millions of Americans are working together to stand up against these threats
True North Research’s director Lisa Graves contributed to this article.
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