By Ansev Demirhan and Evan Vorpahl
A slew of national and state anti-abortion groups have jumped into Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race in aid of Brad Schimel. Two super PACs infused with cash via billionaire Dick Uihlein are each spending six-figure sums on digital ads attacking his opponent, Susan Crawford, and canvassing. Meanwhile, other in-state anti-choice groups have also mobilized behind Schimel, who has indicated he does not object to the state’s 1849 abortion ban. Polls show 63% of registered voters support greater access to abortion than would be allowed under the 175-year old law that the court is considering.
Here’s more on the anti-abortion groups spending around the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
“Women Speak Out” Is Mostly Underwritten by a Man: Dick Uihlein
Women Speak Out (WSO) is the PAC arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA-PLA), a national 501(c)(4) anti-abortion group that routinely inserts itself into state elections. Despite its name, “Women Speak Out” is funded mainly via one man: Illinois billionaire Dick Uihlein, who has deployed at least five separate entities in the race so far. In 2024, over 96% of WSO’s funding came from Uihlein’s Restoration PAC. Uihlein opposes access to safe and legal abortion anywhere. Uihlein’s Restoration of America has also contributed at least $11 million to SBA-PLA since 2021 ($5,083,250 in 2023, $2,732,071 in 2022, and $3,232,250 in 2021).
As of March 20, 2025, WSO has reported spending at least $120,000 on canvassing efforts in support of Schimel. SBA-PLA has suggested that parents’ rights could be harmed by the state’s supreme court, the same claims the group deployed when it failed to stop Ohioans from enshrining abortion into their state Constitution in 2023.
In 2024, SBA-PLA said it had more than 200 canvassers in Wisconsin campaigning for Trump and U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde. It claims to have visited more than 509,000 Wisconsin homes and targeted more than 281,000 “persuadable [Wisconsin] voters” with digital ads in 2024. Nationwide, SBA-PLA boasted spending $92 million on the 2024 election cycle. The Heritage Foundation–the right-wing group that spearheaded the Project 2025 template for Trump’s second term that he has followed closely since taking office)–also funded SBA-PLA previously. In 2023, WSO spent more than $2 million backing Dan Kelly (other Uihlein-tied front groups spent an additional $6+ million in that Supreme Court race).
SBA-PLA’s Positions, Funders, and Ties
Over the years, other anti-choice men have also thrown their voices through SBA-PLA’s Women Speak Out, including Trump billionaire backers Robert Mercer, Paul Singer, and Sean Fieler. In turn, WSO has aided policymakers with anti-abortion agendas, such as Todd Akin, who lost a U.S. Senate race in Missouri after notoriously spreading the misinformation that “legitimate rape” rarely leads to pregnancy.
Here are some other notable claims by SBA or its leaders:
- An SBA-PLA spokesperson was caught on tape reiterating the group’s goal–“abortion is illegal, all the time”–as she defended a Tennessee law with no express exceptions for the life or health of the patient, or in instances of rape or incest.
- SBA-PLA’s leader, Marjorie Dannenfelser, has called an exception for rape “abominable” and has backed bills that would limit access to contraception, such as IUDs and morning after pills; plus, she has also sought to halt fetal tissue research.
- SBA-PLA has even argued for a “right” to spread abortion misinformation, challenging laws against making false statements about candidates.
SBA-PLA also has ties to anti-abortion powerbroker Leonard Leo, a singular figure behind packing the U.S. Supreme Court. Leo hand-picked the list of Supreme Court candidates Trump nominated from–Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Prior to 2020, groups tied to him received nearly $600 million dollars to advance his agenda to capture the Court, limit our rights, and change American culture. This sum is in addition to the nearly $1.6 billion trust fund billionaire Barre Seid gave to Leo in 2020 to reshape America. Leo’s network has reported giving more than $14.5 million to SBA-PLA and its “education fund” the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) since 2017.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an SPLC-designated hate group that orchestrated the litigation to reverse Roe v. Wade, has also given $125,000 to SBA-PLA/CLI since 2018. ADF has elevated medical misinformation produced by SBA-PLA’s CLI in lawsuits seeking to ban abortion medicine; it used CLI studies that would ultimately be retracted for their lack of scientific rigor and undisclosed conflicts of interest, to argue that the abortion pill is unsafe. ADF’s attacks on medication abortion have downplayed the extensive and peer-reviewed body of scientific research that proves the abortion pill is safer than Viagra, Tylenol, and Penicillin.
Another national anti-abortion group with ties to Leonard Leo, Students for Life Action, has also attacked Schimel’s opponent. Leo previously co-chaired the board of its affiliated Students for Life of America. Leo’s business partner, Greg Mueller, and former Gov. Scott Walker (who installed Daniel Kelly on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2016) were also previously on the group’s board. The groups’ leader, Kristan Hawkins, regularly compares abortion to slavery, and endorsed Kelly in his unsuccessful judicial race in 2023. SFLA promotes a “life at conception” bill to ban abortion nationwide, with no exception for rape or incest, and supports imprisoning doctors who perform abortions.
APP PAC Is Another Uihlein-Funded Attack Ad Machine
The APP PAC, which has an anti-choice/anti-LGBTQ+ electoral agenda, has also spent $500,000 on digital advertisements attacking Susan Crawford (as of March 20, 2025). APP PAC was one of five differently named Uihlein-funded groups that backed Kelly in 2023, when it spent nearly $800,000 on attempts to stoke anti-trans fears and more to aid Kelly’s failed bid.
Of the more than $12.7 million in contributions APP PAC reported receiving from 2023 to 2024, more than $11.2 million can be attributed to Uihlein. APP PAC received more than $10.7 million from Uihlein’s Restoration PAC. A super PAC called “Jefferson Rising” also gave APP PAC $500,000 last October. That group received $18 million from right-wing billionaire Tim Dunn in 2024 and $450,000 from two Uihlein-tied Super PACs, among other big funders.
APP PAC is related to the “American Principles Project” (APP), which has been heavily funded by anti-choice/anti-LGBTQ+ hedge funder Sean Fieler of Connecticut, who chairs the group’s board. APP contributed more than $338,759 to APP PAC in 2024. Fieler also leads and bankrolls the related APP Foundation (APPF).
APP has assailed LGBTQ+ rights and more:
- It has helped drive inflammatory “culture war” claims, namely weaponizing anti-trans rhetoric to attack Democrats in elections. The group has touted its anti-trans messaging and even credited these tactics as “critical” to Trump’s 2024 win, in a self-published January 2024 report titled “Defeating They/Them.”
- APP board chair Fieler has compared LGBTQ+ rights to totalitarian regimes, claiming “[i]t’s the most dangerous movement in the U.S. today…” Fieler has made a similar claim about ESG investing. (He has also sought to tie U.S. currency to the gold standard, which would devastate the U.S. economy; some of his wealth comes from gold mines.)
- Fieler has also aided Leo’s efforts to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with appointees hostile to abortion, which resulted in the ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, a ruling that Fieler has highly praised. Fieler’s APP joined a slew of other right-wing groups, many backed by Leo, in supporting the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ Project 2025 playbook.
Uihlein’s Restoration of America gave more than $4.4 million to APP from 2020 to 2023. In 2022, APP received $150,000 from Eric O’Keefe’s “Wisconsin Alliance for Reform,” which also spent in the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation gave $400,000 in grants to APP from 2017 to 2022. The Leonard Leo-tied Judicial Crisis Network has also funded APP.
APP was co-founded by Frank Cannon, a long-time strategist at SBA-PLA, and Leonard Leo ally Robert George. Cannon also worked with the anti-marriage equality group called the “National Organization for Marriage” (NOM), which was launched by Luis Tellez and Maggie Gallagher, who were also early directors of APP. Notably, Neil Corkery, who holds the financial books of a number of Leo groups, was NOM’s treasurer for years, including when the group was heavily involved in a successful campaign to oust three members of the Iowa Supreme Court after it recognized the right of adults in Iowa to marry same sex partners in 2009.
Other Anti-Abortion Groups Target the Wisconsin Supreme Court
Wisconsin Family Action, a 501(c)(4), has also spent funds to reach out to Wisconsinites, and it has asked for 300 volunteers to send out hand-written mailers in order to “flip our state court from liberal to conservative!” The group recently announced a six-figure, multi-media advocacy campaign in support of Schimel. This campaign will target 250,000 voters–with a specific focus on conservative and Christian voters.
In a blog post, WFA proclaimed that “the State Supreme Court has an incredible amount of power. Over the next few years, our high court is likely to make decisions on important issues.” It specifically named “life, religious liberty, parental rights, [and] school choice,” monikers used to refer to reproductive access, the ability to discriminate under the guise of religion and parental rights, and the ability to funnel public tax dollars to religiously funded institutions that have little to no accountability or oversight. “They’ll weigh in on efforts to maintain integrity in our elections and consider cases that pertain to freedom of speech. This is not a time to sit on the sidelines,” the group continued, referencing the court’s power to decide on the fairness of the state’s electoral maps, which could be drawn again by the state legislature to impose hyperpartisan maps.
Combined, WFA and its related 501(c)(3), Wisconsin Family Council (WFC), reported an annual revenue of just under $1.9 million in 2023. It has also previously received funding from the “National Christian Charitable Foundation,” which has received substantial funding traced to anti-abortion billionaire Ron Cameron, according to The Guardian.
WFA is a state partner of Focus on the Family, which was founded by the televangelist James Dobson in 1976. WFA has attacked reproductive choice and marriage equality for years. In 2006, WFA and the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin partnered on an expensive campaign to back a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, which ultimately passed, but was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014. (WFA was also embroiled in the bipartisan criminal investigation called John Doe II, although it denied any wrongdoing. Ultimately, the then-right-wing dominated Wisconsin Supreme Court quashed the probe after justices, who were elected to the court with the help of spending by some of the groups being investigated by a bipartisan group of prosecutors, refused to recuse.)
Pro-Life Wisconsin (PLW) has also jumped into the contest over the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It is a 501(c)(4) group that opposes all abortions with no exceptions for the life and health of the mother, rape, or incest. It has also opposed birth control and IVF. (PLW, like WFA, previously endorsed Dan Kelly and Brian Hagedorn for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.)
For the past several years, PLW has reported an annual revenue of less than $150,000, but its 501(c)(3) arm, PLW Education Task Force (PLW-ETF), has seen an increase in revenue in recent years. PLW-ETF received approximately $1.1 million in 2023, mostly from DAFs.
While PLW has not officially endorsed Schimel, both the group and its leaders have shown their support for Schimel in other ways. For example: PLW donated money to Schimel’s campaign. PLW’s January newsletter declared “the easiest road to protecting pre-born life in Wisconsin will be to elect Brad Schimel to the state supreme court.” And, Matt Sande, PLW’s chief lobbyist, gave a TV interview in which he endorsed Schimel, and Dan Miller, PLW’s state director, also urged people to vote for Schimel.
PLW and WFA have unsuccessfully argued that they have an interest in two cases involving reproductive rights that are slated for the state’s highest court this year. The first case, Kaul v. Urmanski, will determine whether the state’s 1849 abortion restrictions can be applied to ban abortion access in the state. If the Wisconsin Supreme Court allows that law to stand, the second case, Planned Parenthood v. Urmanski, will determine if such an abortion ban violates the state’s constitution. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that PLW and WFA do not have standing to join those cases, so the groups filed an amicus brief together in the Kaul case. In response to the oral arguments in that case, Schimel accused the state court justices who expressed concern about the 1849 law, all women, of “being driven by their emotions.”
For additional information about this article, please contact Evan Vorpahl at evan@truenorthresearch.org. True North’s Lisa Graves and Alyssa Bowen contributed to this article.
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