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# The Secret Money Behind the Push to Ban Abortion
May 27 2019
Written by Sue Sturgis.
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**HUMAN RIGHTS**--Carrie Severino leads the Judicial Crisis Network, a 501(c)(4) secret-money "social welfare" nonprofit that has spent millions of dollars promoting conservative judges and plays a key role in the campaign to ban legal abortion in the U.S.
The image is a still from a [2018 C-SPAN interview](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4738920/carrie-severino-disclosing-judicial-crisis-networks-donors) in which Severino defends her group's refusal to disclose its donors.
Rank of Brett Kavanaugh's 2018 appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court among the reasons there's a new [push to ban abortion](https://rewire.news/article/2019/05/17/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-extreme-abortion-bans-sweeping-the-country/) in state legislatures across the South and elsewhere: [**1**](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/three-reasons-theres-a-new-push-to-limit-abortion-in-state-legislatures/)
In the fiscal year before it spearheaded Kavanaugh's confirmation, amount the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) — a secret-money 501(c)(4) "social welfare" nonprofit that promotes conservative judges — received in anonymous donations, according to a tax return recently obtained by campaign finance watchdogs: [**$22 million**](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/)
Size of a single anonymous donation JCN got during the period between July 2017 and June 2018, when [abortion rights-protecting](https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/07/justice-kennedy-abortion-and-the-legacy-of-a-third-choice/) Justice Anthony Kennedy resigned, opening the door to Kavanaugh, who was backed by anti-abortion groups: [**$17 million**](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/)
Number of other anonymous donations JCN got that year, all of them at least six-figure: [**9**](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/)
JCN's spending in 2017 to support the confirmation of President Trump's other Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, who has also [shown hostility](https://prochoice.org/senate-confirms-gorsuch-for-scotus/) to the Court's 1973 *Roe v. Wade* decision legalizing abortion: [**$10 million**](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/)
Year in which Carrie Severino — a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and spouse of [Catholic anti-abortion lawyer](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/22/trump-religious-activists-hhs-351735) Roger Severino, who now runs the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights and [opposes](https://www.hrc.org/blog/trump-appoints-radical-anti-lgbtq-activist-to-lead-hhs-civil-rights-office) contraceptive access under the Affordable Care Act — took the helm of JCN: [**2014**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Crisis_Network)
Among JCN's top funders, rank of the Wellspring Committee, a secretive nonprofit that serves as a conduit for anonymous contributions to conservative causes and is led by [hard-line Opus Dei Catholic](https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1990-05-25-9001100227-story.html) Ann Corkery and her husband, Neil Corkery, who [has served](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/11/wellsprings-flow/) as JCN's treasurer: [**1**](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/11/trump-inauguration-money-links-secretive-dark-money/)
Amount Wellspring funneled to JCN between 2010 and 2018: [**more than $54.2 million**](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/11/trump-inauguration-money-links-secretive-dark-money/)
According to the newly released tax return, amount JCN paid that fiscal year to the BH Group, a Virginia limited liability company connected to Trump advisor Leonard Leo, who's also the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal organization whose current or former members [include](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society) five sitting Supreme Court justices: [**$241,000**](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/)
Decades for which Leo — also [reportedly](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Leonard_Leo) an Opus Dei member who plays a key role in hiring at George Mason University's law school in Virginia — has worked to push the judiciary to the right in order to enable an abortion crackdown: [**3**](https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jul/06/leonard-leo-supreme-court-replacement-trump-justice-nomination-abortion)
According to conservative commentator Ed Whelan, number of people "more dedicated to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn *Roe v. Wade*" than Leo: [0](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Leonard_Leo#Anti-Abortion_Views)
Month in which Leo told a gathering of conservative activists in Florida that they had to mobilize in "very unprecedented ways" to finish their transformation of the U.S. Supreme Court: [**2/2019**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/leonard-leo-federalists-society-courts/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.54c229acd84b)
Between 2014 and 2017 alone, amount Leo and his allies raised for JCN and other secret-money nonprofits to carry out their court-transforming agenda: [**more than $250 million**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/leonard-leo-federalists-society-courts/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.54c229acd84b)
Year since JCN has also been funneling millions of dollars to state supreme court races, money that has bought misleading or [even libelous](https://www.facingsouth.org/2018/05/secret-money-courts-group-accused-libel-arkansas) ads: [**2012**](https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/conservative-group-behind-kavanaugh-confirmation-has-spent-years-reshaping-state-and-federal)
*(Click on figure to go to source.)*
*(*[***Sue Sturgis***](https://www.commondreams.org/author/sue-sturgis) *is the Director and regular contributor to the Institute for Southern Study's online magazine,* [*Facing South*](http://www.southernstudies.org/)*, with a focus on energy and environmental issues. Sue is the author or co-author of five Institute reports, including Faith in the Gulf (Aug/Sept 2008), Hurricane Katrina and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (January 2008) and Blueprint for Gulf Renewal (Aug/Sept 2007). Sue holds a Masters in Journalism from New York University. Posted most recently at Common Dreams.)*
*-cw*
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