U.S. law already stipulates that PEPFAR funds, like foreign aid in general, cannot be spent on providing abortion. As reiterated in its most recent five-year strategy document, “PEPFAR does not fund abortions, consistent with longstanding legal restrictions on the use of foreign assistance funding related to abortion.” Pointing out actual PEPFAR policy and practice, of course, will have little effect on conservative groups’ rhetoric, in part because what these groups are concerned with is broader than abortion: Their concern is controlling our reproductive and sexual health and freedom. And they’re willing to hold up funding for countering a deadly virus to pursue this obsessive quest for control. Talking points on blocking PEPFAR from Family Research Council put it bluntly: “PEPFAR should not be a major slush fund for the Biden administration’s radical social policies on abortion, sexual orientation, and gender ideology overseas.” Meanwhile, Leo’s network, a “slush fund” if there ever was one, tries to stay behind the scenes.
These groups that he funds, who are now targeting PEPFAR, share more than an anti-abortion platform. They serve important functions on the Christian right more broadly. Some are directly involved in implementing something called Project 2025, a plan to remake the next presidential administration on day one to align with Christian conservative goals—a plan which Leo is also backing. The leadership of many of these groups, as documents shared by Accountable.US show, are members of the secretive Council for National Policy, including the presidents of the Americans United for Life, Family Research Council, Students for Life, and Susan B. Anthony List. (Portions of CNP membership lists have been previously published by The New Republic and Documented.) Leo, too, is a CNP member. House Speaker Mike Johnson is a CNP member. His recent “ascent to Speaker of the House is hardly good news for PEPFAR,” wrote J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in November. “Indeed, it is a thunderclap.”
The PEPFAR battle is one piece of a broader picture in 2024: the prospect that Christian nationalism might prevail. For these groups, to control our sexuality and our genders, our health and our rights, is a fundamental element of gaining total control. We may not typically think of fighting for AIDS funding as part of the fight against Christian nationalism, but this effort shows how it absolutely can be. Some of PEPFAR’s defenders hope to make progress through “dialogue,” to “lead with facts and not misinformation and disinformation,” as Ambassador-At Large John Nkengasong, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, said at a recent event. But correcting anti-abortion groups’ lies about PEPFAR and abortion can only go so far in the real fight here. And that’s not nearly far enough.