Susan B. Anthony List, the largest anti-abortion organisation in the US, plans to spend $41 million (£32.2m) in the 2020 election to help reelect President Donald Trump and anti-choice members of Congress.
“We’ll work closely with our local allies on the most ambitious pro-life legislative agenda in history to aggressively challenge, erode, and finally overturn Roe v. Wade,” president Marjorie Dannenfelser said at the group's annual fundraising dinner Monday night in Washington, D.C., according to The Hill. "On top of this, we’ll be protecting our pro-life Senate majority, increasing our ranks in the House, and reelecting Donald Trump."
As we've reported before, Trump has been banking on inflammatory misinformation about pro-choice measures to rile up his base in 2020. He has consistently misrepresented efforts in New York and Virginia to expand access to abortion later in pregnancy, painting Democrats as promoting "infanticide" — something healthcare providers have said is a misrepresentation of the truth. Dannenfelser has called efforts to protect abortion rights a "gift" for the anti-choice movement. "Going into 2020, abortion extremists are giving us an unlikely gift, are they not?” she told the crowd.
Her announcement comes as anti-choice lawmakers at the state level have passed an unprecedented number of measures restricting access to abortion or outright banning the procedure. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 378 abortion restrictions were introduced between January 1 and May 20 of this year. This wave of anti-choice legislation has the ultimate goal of overturning or undermining Roe. Since January, more than a dozen states have introduced bans on abortion once a "foetal heartbeat," i.e. embryonic pulsing, is detected. Five states — Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, and Louisiana — have signed these types of bills into law. Last month, Alabama banned abortion at any stage of gestation, except in cases in which the woman's life is in danger, and Missouri banned abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
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