Knights of Columbus Secretly Donated Millions to ‘Deceptive’ Anti-Abortion Centers

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.

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.”

Targeting the youth and abortion liberal states

CPCs in California were the largest recipients of the Knights’ donations in 2022 (17% of the total), followed by Pennsylvania (11%), Ohio (7%), and Illinois (7%). In all these states, abortion rights remain protected.

At least 52 of the CPCs funded by the Knights target adolescents, high school and college students. These CPCs have either explicitly designed educational programs for them or strategically set up their sites near campuses. Between 2017 and 2022, the Knights gave more than $1.5m in 80 donations to those 52 CPCs.

One of the CPCs targeting adolescents in Oregon, where abortion is legal without restrictions, tells girls: “Your school may not be the place to ask questions.” Another one in California deploys stands within campuses and misleadingly offers “pre-abortion screenings,” suggesting these services are meant to provide information to people who have already decided on an abortion, when in fact they often appear geared to try to change people’s minds or delay action.

Another centre in California targeting students fails to mention that abortion is legal in the state until a foetus is viable (at around week 23), and only claims: “In the state of California, a forced abortion is illegal. We can help you understand your legal rights, so you can decide what’s right for you.” No pro-choice advocate has ever argued for the right to “force” someone to have an abortion.

The Knights of Columbus didn’t answer openDemocracy’s repeated requests for comments.

A controversial charity model

Almost 40% of all philanthropic donations made by the Knights of Columbus Charities Inc over the analysed period went to CPCs. The rest of the money went to churches, “acquisition and distribution of wheelchairs to the needy,” “disaster relief,” “persecuted Christians relief,” “efforts regarding human trafficking,” ”food for those in need,” “Covid-19 relief,” “support of seminarian development,” “Ukraine solidarity relief,” “general operations,” and the ‘Culture of Life’ programme, which also includes anti-abortion activities.

Charity is usually presented as the foremost important principle of the Knights of Columbus. But only a tiny fraction of the money managed by the order goes to grants and donations to other non-profits, according to filings for its four main branches.

Despite having revenue of $12.4bn and total assets worth $134bn in 2021 – mostly from its insurance business, investments and financial advising businesses – these four branches donated just $220m over the period 2017 to 2021. Most of that, $171m, went to US organisations.

As of 2022, the salaries of the 17 Supreme Council’s most senior employees ranged between $300,000 and $1.7m. These officers are also allowed to travel first class, including with their spouses when their “presence serves a bona-fide business purpose.”

In 2019, the Knights launched the Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund, through which the group began offering so-called ‘donor advised funds’ – a controversial personal finance product whereby those who wish to donate cash and benefit from tax breaks effectively hand control of that money to a third party, which decides (supposedly on the “advice” of the donor) where to give it.

The fund disclosed revenues of $64.3m between 2017 and 2021, and donated about 20% of the money.

Knight of ‘anti-rights’ politics

The Knights have long been involved in anti-abortion political campaigns.

The group helped launch the March for Life in 1974, a year after the Supreme Court’s Roe ruling, and continues to provide substantial funding for the annual anti-abortion demonstration in Washington. Since 1980, its money has funded the National Catholic Bioethics Center’s (NCBC) anti-LGBTQ workshops held for “bishops of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.”

The centre claims to uphold “the dignity of the human person in healthcare and biomedical research,” while it argues that being transgender entails “negative health outcomes” and advises Catholic hospitals and schools to deny trans people rights to their gender identity, healthcare and bathrooms, and to punish non-compliant employees. The incumbent leader of the Knights, Patrick Kelly, has been an NCBC board member since 2013, and NCBC positions have informed anti-trans health policies deployed in Florida by governor Ron DeSantis.

In 2005, the Knights lobbied for the appointment of member Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. In letters to senators, Carl Anderson, then ‘supreme Knight’ (leader of the organisation) and a right-wing Republican who had worked for senator Jesse Helms and the Reagan administration, claimed opponents to Alito’s nomination were motivated by “anti-Catholic prejudice,” despite the fact that Alito would be the fifth Catholic justice in a nine-member body.

During Alito’s confirmation hearing, Kate Michelman, former president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, warned: “There is nothing in judge Alito’s lengthy public record to suggest that he recognizes such limits [on the government’s authority to reach into intimate areas of citizens’ private lives] for anyone, and even less so for women”. She added: “A woman’s right to choose is a powerful manifestation of privacy… There is no sense in judge Alito’s writings or rulings that privacy is a fundamental constitutional right.”

In his first public remarks after the overruling of Roe, Alito said it was an “honour” to write the majority opinion that became the court’s ruling. The Knights themselves praised the ruling and warned they would “keep up the pressure in Washington.”

The NCRP’s Stephanie Peng said: “The anti-abortion movement has been building for a really long time, and a lot of the people that are in power now, that are trying to overturn laws or restrict abortion access, are people who have been involved with these organisations for years and years.”

She added: “How powerful an organisation like Knights of Columbus is – it’s not just about the money… but connections and influence.”

Knights’ money has also funded organisations that have litigated high-profile Supreme Court cases – with decisive support from Alito – to deny contraceptive healthcare to workers, despite overwhelming popular support for this policy, including from Christian women.

Another recipient of Knights’ cash is the ultra-conservative media empire Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN, dubbed “the Fox News of religious broadcasting”), the anti-abortion and pro-Republican group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America and the Federalist Society (considered the “conservative pipeline” to the Supreme Court).

People’s donations to the Knights were, in turn, “going to this kind of funding that was shaping the Catholic conversation in the wider culture,” said Tom Roberts, the former editor of the National Catholic Reporter, which extensively covered the Knights’ increasingly right-wing political agenda. “There was no other funding for other kinds of conversations around poverty or homelessness or militarism.”

“This became the almost exclusive focus – and run by people who had been on the extreme right [wing] side of political involvement in their pasts.”