A powerful anti-rights movement is growing in the UK
A powerful anti-rights movement is growing in the UK
A powerful anti-rights movement is growing in the UK, threatening to roll back our hard-won freedoms and rewrite the rules on whose rights, bodies and lives deserve protection. But - we refuse to be divided. @amnestyUK
We conducted an extensive financial analysis of 32 of these anti-rights organisations. Here's what we uncovered:
- Anti-rights groups have dramatically increased their spending by over 33% between 2019 and 2023, reaching £106 million
- The largest spenders are UK branches of US organisations (£34 million), ultra-conservative Christian policy/advocacy groups (£31.5 million), and anti-abortion organisations (£28.5 million)
- Groups promoting so-called "conversion therapy" have increased their spending by an alarming 165%
- The growth in expenditure of ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ – which work to dissuade pregnant people from seeking an abortion – has risen 46% between 2019 and 2023
Big spenders from the US
The Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian group that was instrumental in decimating abortion rights in the USA through the reversal of Roe v Wade, set up a UK branch in 2015. The ADF works to advance laws and policies that oppose access to abortion and LGBTI rights. In the UK they have been defending individuals charged for breaching Safe Access Zones around abortion clinics.
The ADF is spending more and more in the UK and its expenditure increased by 187% between 2019 and 2023, for a total of 3.9 million.
Anti-abortion groups and crisis pregnancy centres
We identified 25 anti-abortion organisations, including 13 so-called "crisis pregnancy centres". These unregulated centres pretend to offer impartial advice, but actually actively discourage abortion by spreading misinformation and stigma. For 9 of these 13 centres their spending rose by 46% from £4.4 million to £6.4million between 2019 and 2023.
Alarmingly, some of these centres receive funding from the National Lottery and government grants.
So-called ‘Conversion Therapy’ – a violation of human rights
We mapped 12 groups promoting the harmful and abusive practice of so-called "conversion therapy," aiming to ‘change’ or suppress people’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The spending of 4 of these surged by nearly 165%, marking the fastest growth of all categories tracked.
Despite the UK government announcing plans ban on conversion therapy in July 2024, no legislation has yet materialised.
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