Roe v. Wade is gone.

[Mr Greene]

The UK is a strongly pro-choice country with 86% of Britons wanting abortion to be legal in all or most cases. But the US anti-choice movement has been investing heavily into campaigns in Britain, and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party seems to be support the interference.

There’s been a lot of talk recently suggesting that we need to keep a close eye on abortion rights here in the UK. With whisperings that what happened in America – the toppling of Roe v Wade, which left a 10-year-old denied an abortion – could happen here, especially if Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party makes it into power at the next election.

It seems that Reform UK is veering off in the opposite direction when it comes to women’s rights. The party stands accused by concerned MPs and feminist activists of buddying up with hard right, Christian nationalist groups from the United States – intent on stripping abortion access here in the UK.

Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, seems to have forged deep-running ties with one organisation in particular, the Alliance Defending Freedom, that is now on a mission to roll back British abortion rights, after succeeding in America.

The many apparent links between Farage and the globally-reaching Alliance Defending Freedom International were outlined in a recent New York Times article, which alleges multiple meetings have taken place. The organisation says it promotes “religious freedom”, “free speech” and “the sanctity of life” – often via campaigns against abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights. The ADF is also credited with spearheading the crusade to overturn Roe v Wade in the US, leaving some states with no abortion access whatsoever.

Farage’s personal links to Alliance Defending Freedom include giving evidence to a US House Judiciary Committee event in September 2025, reportedly arranged with help from the ADF’s UK branch. While there, he branded the UK as “awful” and compared citizen rights to that of North Korea.

Many of the ADF’s alumni now work for the Trump (someone Farage once described as “the bravest man” he knows) administration.

Farage was championed by the ADF for condemning UK abortion clinic buffer zones, which prevent protesters from praying within 150m of a clinic or shouting “murderer” or “mum” to women seeking a termination, labelling the zones “a crackdown on free expression.”

The ADF has recently provided legal aid for those found breaching the UK’s abortion buffer zone rules too. It’s a sneaky tactic used by the group – claiming that the newly-implemented ban is an impingement on “free speech rights”, rather than just outwardly stating its ultimate goal: to close all abortion providers. Anti-abortion groups know that the UK is mostly pro-abortion rights and that they cannot win by out and out calling to shut services down.

Far right figureheads, like Elon Musk and Tommy Robinson, have also been wading in on the ‘free speech’ debate, attempting to paint the UK as a country where nobody is ‘allowed to say anything anymore’, rather than discussing the nuanced differences between free speech and hate speech, or harassment.

The US Vice President, JD Vance, raised the British abortion and free speech issue at the Munich Security Conference back in February, claiming that the UK has “placed the basic liberties of religious Britons [...] in the crosshairs” with the buffer zone implementation, in reference to the conviction of Adam Smith-Connor, who ignored multiple police requests to move away from a BPAS clinic in Bournemouth.

As for what ‘finding a way around a buffer zone’ looks like, there’s since been a major ramping up in anti-rights spending on British soil: between 2019 and 2023, anti-abortion groups in the UK spent a combined £106 million (a rise of 33%).

In particular, the ADF’s UK branch has more than doubled its spending from £390,000 in 2020 to £770,000 in 2022 – and reported an income of £1.3 million the following year.

It’s thought that, without being able to physically stand outside and torment women going in for a termination, one of the ways groups are spreading their messaging is through crisis ‘pregnancy centres.’

Almost a third of these centres have been accused of spreading misleading medical information, unethical advice or both (as per a BBC Panorama investigation), including claiming that having an abortion leads to a higher risk of cancer. Said centres also saw funding surge by 46%, underlining how US-style lobbying is increasingly being bankrolled on British soil.

Further clues that his party are not as ‘pro-choice’ as Farage says, include the fact that, when asked earlier this year about the amendment that would see abortion removed from criminal law, all of Reform UK’s MP’s voted against it.

In October, Reform UK also appointed Professor James Orr as a senior adviser. Orr is a theologian who has previously worked within Trump’s administration, and who is known for his hardline stance on abortion, opposing it even in cases of rape, incest, or if there’s a serious risk to health.

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/...-abortion/

Depending on how many of them can stay out of prison...
Reform leader jailed for pro-Russia bribery
Reform MP jailed for attacking girlfriend