On 7 June, the i Paper revealed that Nigel Farage has personally taken over £83,000 in earnings and expenses from US anti-abortion groups.
The news comes less than a week after Reform’s candidate for the Makerfield by-election, Robert Kenyon, faced a grilling on Question Time for his previous comment that:
abortion is the cowardly act of women murdering a defenceless baby and that women do it so they can shag anyone they want.
Farage, Reform, and the anti-abortion lobby
The far-right party has previously claimed that it has no plans to alter UK abortion law. This is a lie. Even before the party stated its intention to re-criminalise abortion, its position was clear. Reform UK is not to be trusted with abortion rights in the UK.
Between comments from the party’s existing MPs and candidates, Farage’s calls for a reduction in the legal time limit on abortions, and the the new revelations of his financial ties to anti-choice campaigners.
As the Canary reported back in October, Farage had already travelled to the US at the behest of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) a major conservative Christian organisation. The vehemently anti-choice group helped overturn Roe V Wade, meaning that millions of US Americans lost their right to an abortion.
Ostensibly, Farage had travelled to the US to speak about censorship before the House Judiciary Committee. Of course, for the far-right leader, ‘censorship’ included the prosecution of UK anti-abortion campaigners who violated the buffer zones around clinics. An ADF spokesperson said:
Their criminal prosecutions for peaceful expression, which is protected under national and international law, are some of the most egregious examples of censorship in the UK today.
‘Saving Western civilisation’
However, analysis from the i Paper revealed the extent of the financial kickbacks the UK’s far-right leader was taking from similar groups in the powerful US anti-abortion lobby. These include (but aren’t limited to):
- A £25,000 speaking engagement in 2024 with the AZ Liberty Network. The broad-ranging coalition includes several groups that focus on restricting abortion rights in Arizona. At August’s ‘Keep Arizona Free Summit’, Farage told the lobby groups that they were “saving western civilisation”.
- £44,300 for a single speech (and £9,500 for flights and accommodation) from the Club for Growth, back in March. The club provides financial support for anti-abortion political candidates.
- £4,360 from the New York Young Republicans Club for flights and hotels. The organisation supports New York legislation which would restrict abortion access.
Likewise, Farage also gave a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2025. The organisation has stated that it “considers every abortion a human tragedy”. The Reform leader accepted £280 for accommodation, for his trouble.
The i used data from Parliament’s Register of Members’ Financial Interests. This means that it only concerns the money that Farage has declared publicly.
However, given that he’s currently under investigation for failing to declare a £5m ‘gift’ from crypto billionaire Chris Harborne, we’re not going to assume the £83,000 is the end of the story.
‘Influence and deep pockets’
Back when the ADF summoned Farage to the US, the Canary speculated on the reasoning behind the (theoretically) unlikely pairing:
the fundamentalist lobby group has influence and deep pockets, and Farage would sell out his own grandmother for a pack of cigarettes, never mind a shot at being PM.
It gives us no pleasure at all to see a little time has borne out that cynicism. Likewise, at the time, Zoe Williams wrote in the Guardian that:
When Farage was head of the Brexit party, it had no stance on abortion. The New York Times could find no record of his having done so, anyway, and knowing him as we all do, you can’t imagine it: it doesn’t chime at all with the smoking, pint-loving, British pound sterling and sovereignty guy, to be digging around in women’s business.
Yet as if by magic, suddenly last November, he wanted to talk about rolling back the abortion time limit “given that we can now save babies at 22 weeks” (the time limit is 24). By May this year, the current limit was “absolutely ludicrous” , according to Nigel. Although he did say to New York Times reporters that it was “bollocks” to say he had found a new interest in the topic of reproductive rights.
Since then, back in April, the UK’s Parliament has negated regressive Victorian-era laws which allowed the state to investigate and prosecute people for obtaining an abortion. Four Reform MPs actually voted against the move, instead backing a further restriction requiring in-person consultation for abortion medication.
Beyond this, Reform deputy leader Richard Tice described decriminalisation as “abortion carnage”. Likewise, the party’s London mayoral candidate, Laila Cunningham, called the move “the ending of life as a policy solution”.
Tory-Reform turncoat and nominal ‘equalities spokesperson’ Suella Braverman went so far as to state that the far-right party would reverse the decriminalisation of abortion.
Reform is a danger to abortion rights
As the Canarypreviously explained:
Reform keeps its official abortion position deliberately vague, which is exactly why it is dangerous. There is no abortion policy on the party’s published policy pages, yet Farage has let ADF International use his words in a campaign against buffer zones outside abortion clinics, and the people now shaping Reform’s policy world sit inside the same transatlantic hard-right ecosystem that spent years eroding reproductive rights in the United States. You do not need a manifesto promise of outright rollback to see the threat. Personnel, rhetoric and parliamentary votes already point in the same direction.
YouGov polling suggests that 86% of Reform UK voters support the right to abortion. However, that fact won’t matter, because Reform is not a party even of its own bigoted cheerleaders.
Rather, it is a regressive, misogynistic corporate entity, whose policies are dictated by whichever business or lobby group will pay. And oh boy, will the US anti-abortion lobby pay.
Featured image via Getty/Ryan Jenkinson
From Canary via This RSS Feed.