(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Knights of Columbus and CPCs: How all-male Catholic order gave millions to anti-abortion centres [1] [] Date: 2024-02 A multi-billion-dollar all-male Catholic order in the US has handed at least $10.8m to hundreds of anti-abortion centres in six years, openDemocracy can reveal – several times what was previously known. Founded in the 19th century to assist Irish widows and orphans in the US, the Knights of Columbus – named after Christopher Columbus – funded at least 485 of the 2,500 so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centres’ in America between 2017 and 2022, our analysis of hundreds of documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) found. The order claims to have two million members. A 2006 US congressional report implicated crisis pregnancy centres in the spreading of health misinformation, saying they provided “false or misleading information about a link between abortion and breast cancer, future fertility and mental health issues”. A 2020 investigation by openDemocracy also found such centres, supported by US networks, spreading similar misinformation around the world. The documents analysed by openDemocracy were filed through the four largest branches of the order: Knights of Columbus Charities Inc, Knights of Columbus Supreme Council, Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund and Knights of Columbus Charities USA. There are also thousands of smaller branches. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now The first of these, the Connecticut-based Knights of Columbus Charities Inc, appears to be the main vehicle through which the all-male order donates to anti-abortion centres. But it is not the only one – and even the money tracked down by this investigation is likely just a fraction of the true level of financial support the Knights provide to CPCs. Through its programme ‘To Promote the Culture of Life’, the Knights give money and supplies to anti-abortion organisations that either run CPCs themselves or donate to them in turn. And a network of thousands of local ‘councils’ (the Knights’ basic organisational units) also raise and give money to CPCs – but either don’t submit financial filings to the IRS or don’t disclose detailed information about this giving. Finally, the organisation doesn’t report how much of its international spending goes to CPCs abroad, particularly in Canada and Mexico. As a result, the true value of the Knights’ CPCs funding has been significantly underestimated. For example, a study by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) was only able to track down $1.6m from the Knights to CPCs between 2015 and 2019, and didn’t include it among the top ten funders of CPCs. In total, the NCRP found CPCs had been given $278m from foundations in the period. “Seeing how much of [the Knights’] funding goes to CPCs is a little unsettling, though not necessarily surprising. It aligns with our own research findings that anti-abortion work is often obscured within the work of larger organisations and it underscores the deceptive nature of CPCs,” said Stephanie Peng, NCRP’s movement research manager. The Knights began to donate ultrasound machines to CPCs in 2009, saying it wanted to offer each woman “a ‘window into the womb’ that gives her the ability to see her unborn child, to hear his or her heart beating, and to recognize the miracle of life within her”, and the group claims to have given 1,745 since then. These ‘non-diagnostic ultrasounds’ have been condemned by doctors and medical organisations. The American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) “strongly discourages the nonmedical use of ultrasound,” saying that doing so “without a medical indication to view the fetus, obtain images of the fetus, or identify the fetal external genitalia is inappropriate and contrary to responsible medical practice”. In June 2022 – soon after the Supreme Court effectively overturned the US’s constitutional protection for abortion – the Knights launched what it called an “Aid and Support After Pregnancy” initiative to donate $5m in a year to CPCs and ‘maternity homes’ in the US and Canada. (Maternity homes often work alongside CPCs in trying to persuade women to keep pregnancies, offering material support such as temporary housing, food, baby clothes and nappies, or adoptions for their newborns.) According to the group’s 2023 annual report, it exceeded the goal by $1m, although latest US financial filings do not yet allow us to check these figures. Our investigation shows that financial support from Knights of Columbus Charities Inc to CPCs increased by 28% over the period of 2017 to 2022, with the largest recorded donation in 2022 when more than $2m was distributed among 100 of these centres. “An increase in funding to CPCs between 2017 and 2022, with the largest figures in 2022, is an example of what we’ve already been hearing from the frontlines and from CPCs – that Dobbs [Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v Wade] was just the beginning for CPCs and the larger anti-abortion movement, and that they are increasing their infrastructure and influence to continue to dismantle access to abortion,” Peng added. These controversial centres are hardly cash-strapped. Across the US, CPCs attract five times more funding than abortion clinics, according to the NCRP study, which found more than $4bn in state funding and philanthropic donations had gone to “1,291 unique organisations that filed taxes and are known to provide CPC services” between 2015 and 2019. And as soon as the Supreme Court killed Roe, 18 states allocated more than $250m in public funding to CPCs, to be paid from 2023 to 2025, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute and Equity Forward. Dozens of the Knights’ CPC grantees belong to already well-funded networks, such as Net Care, an evangelical anti-abortion group founded in 1975 with 1,200 affiliate CPCs across the US. Net Care is closely linked to another Knights beneficiary, Heartbeat International, which openDemocracy revealed in 2020 was training CPC workers in the US and abroad to use misinformation on abortion-seeking patients – including claims that getting an abortion could make a person’s partner gay. A 2021 study in nine US states by the sexual and reproductive rights group The Alliance exposed how these centres use “deceptive and coercive tactics and medical disinformation”, including by “misleadingly presenting themselves as medical facilities” and targeting “low-income people facing unintended pregnancies to prevent them accessing abortion and contraception”. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/knights-of-columbus-crisis-pregnancy-centres-anti-abortion-us-daf/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/