Nigel Farage Teams Up With Extreme Anti-Abortion Group and Calls for Debate on Restricting Abortion Rights in UK

Nigel Farage is working with an extreme, religious anti-abortion campaign group, against a supposed ‘tsunami of censorship’ in Britain, as he backs calls for a debate on restricting abortion rights in the UK.

Farage was quoted in a statement from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which campaigns to outlaw abortion, as saying that “the crackdown on free expression within the UK is becoming very sinister. Our police and Government now withhold vital public information and we get censored simply for demanding the truth. I will continue to fight this.” 

Farage’s statement comes as he suggests that MPs should debate rolling back the 24 week abortion limit.

“Is 24 weeks right for abortion given that we now save babies at 22?” he told a press conference in London on Thursday.

“That to me would be worthy of a debate in Parliament…”

The Alliance Defending Freedom is an extreme, anti-abortion Christian legal advocacy group in the US, which has been steadily making inroads from across the Atlantic.

It has been branded a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a categorisation the group rejects, and it’s London-based arm ADF International has been busy forging ties with British MPs.

The US organisation has been central to Republican efforts to strip away abortion rights from women, as well as protections for LGBTQ+ people, in the name of Christianity. According to the equality group Glaad, the ADF represents “a danger to every American who values their freedoms”. 

Farage’s intervention comes after a recent post on X/Twitter by the US’ House Judiciary Republican Party account, which highlighted the arrest of a UK anti-abortion activist who’d been praying in a buffer zone near an abortion clinic. 

The lengthy thread from the GOP account mentioned a number of issues of perceived censorship in this country, singling out the case of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, the anti-abortion campaigner arrested by West Midlands Police for breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order outside a clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham.

The case was dropped, and Ms Vaughan-Spruce, who was represented by ADF International (UK) – the group’s European arm – won a £13,000 payout from the force. 

Vaughan-Spruce is a member of US-based anti-abortion group 40 Days for Life, which runs anti-abortion protests outside clinics across every inhabited continent. It hosts ‘praying vigils’ outside abortion clinics and claims to have shut down 157 abortion centres. 

Louise McCudden, Head of External Affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices’ UK – the contraception and safe abortion services charity – said: “Safe Access Zones were passed into law with support from elected MPs across seven parties, and are backed by 77% of Brits. 

“Before they were enforced, we heard stories from clients who had been shouted at, spat at, called murderers, filmed, redirected away from our clinic, and handed false medical information. 

“We have heard from rape survivors who were told they will go to hell; we saw vulnerable women in tears after being told alarming medical lies. We make no apologies for advocating for those women, so they can access their healthcare confidentially and in peace.” 

She added: “In any case, we’ll take no lectures on free speech from supporters of the Global Gag Rule” – hitting out at aid policy which prevents funds from being used to provide legal abortion services or referrals. 

The ADF also joined the Republican committee in taking aim at the UK’s relatively-new Online Safety Act, with ADF International Executive director Paul Coleman stating: “This intervention from the House Judiciary Committee shows the UK is fast becoming notorious around the world for its censorious practices.”

ADF International (UK) backed a recent National Conservatism (NatCon) event in Brussels, which included Nigel Farage and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman as speakers. After it was shut down by local authorities, the ADF backed an emergency legal challenge to the closure, and the event later resumed. 

It is one of a number of anti-abortion groups, hard right commentators, and politicians determined to roll back reproductive rights globally. 

Speaking to Byline Times, Kerry Abel, chair of the UK campaign group Abortion Rights, said of the ADF’s work: “Anti choice rhetoric is fundamentally about controlling women. This is why it has been co-opted by right-wing groups…We unite with the broad and diverse pro-choice majority to say bans off our bodies and no rollbacks here”.

The UK branch of the ADF has received £3.4m in funding since 2019, and spent nearly £3.2m in that time, according to Charity Commission filings. Its aims are listed as “to advance Christianity… by promoting Christian principles and ethics”.

Under the Labour Government, ‘safe access buffer zones’ have come into effect within a 150 metre radius around abortion clinics, from 31st October 2024, in a move intended to bring in stronger safeguards for women accessing the services. Anyone found guilty of breaking the law faces an unlimited fine. 

Safeguarding minister Jess Philips said of the move that “the right to access abortion services is a fundamental right for women in this country, and no one should feel unsafe when they seek to access this… For too long abortion clinics have been without these vital protections, and this Government is determined to do all we can do to make this country a safer place for women.”

The ADF were approached for comment.

Additional reporting by Josiah Mortimer.