{"id":16643,"date":"2025-12-13T05:20:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T05:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/hawleys-launch-dark-money-anti-abortion-advertising-group\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T05:20:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T05:20:24","slug":"hawleys-launch-dark-money-anti-abortion-advertising-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/hawleys-launch-dark-money-anti-abortion-advertising-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawleys launch dark money anti-abortion advertising group"},"content":{"rendered":"<section>\n<div>\n<p><time datetime=\"2025-12-12T18:03:38-05:00\">Dec. 12, 2025, 6:03 PM EST<\/time><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and his wife, Erin, a lawyer for the conservative legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, are launching a dark money group to fund anti-abortion ads across the country, they announced on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The group, <a href=\"https:\/\/lovelifeinitiative.org\/about\/\">called<\/a> Love Life Initiative, plans to run &ldquo;far-reaching advertising campaigns that promote the sanctity of life, advance referendums that protect life, and identify and defeat harmful proposals in statehouses across the nation,&rdquo; according to its website.<\/p>\n<p>The news was first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2025\/12\/12\/hawley-abortion-ballot-measures\">reported<\/a> by Axios.<\/p>\n<p>Spokespeople for Hawley and the Love Life Initiative did not immediately respond to MS NOW&rsquo;s requests for comment.<\/p>\n<p>According to Axios, the ads will not only focus on opposing abortion but also on promoting families &mdash;&nbsp;a priority for the Trump administration. The president has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/04\/21\/us\/politics\/trump-birthrate-proposals.html\">said<\/a> he wants a &ldquo;baby boom&rdquo; and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ms.now\/opinion\/msnbc-opinion\/trump-ivf-conservatives-health-care-insurance-rcna238151\">pledged<\/a> to expand IVF access. Vice President JD Vance said at an anti-abortion rally in D.C. earlier this year that he wants &ldquo;more babies in the United States of America.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>Project 2025, the more than 900-page guidebook to Trump&rsquo;s second term spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, also included several proposals for boosting the birth rate &mdash;&nbsp;including restricting support for abortion across the government, allocating funding for &ldquo;marriage and relationship education,&rdquo; and bolstering national data collection on families.<\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/res.cloudinary.com\/msnow\/images\/w_900,h_600,c_scale\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1765577230\/251212-prolife-march-pi\/251212-prolife-march-pi.jpg?_i=AA\" alt=\"Anti-abortion rights demonstrators march to the Supreme Court for the 52nd annual March For Life in Washington, D.C.\" data-public-id=\"251212-prolife-march-pi\/251212-prolife-march-pi.jpg\" data-format=\"jpg\" data-transformations=\"f_auto,q_auto\" data-version=\"1765577230\" data-seo=\"1\"><figcaption>Anti-abortion rights demonstrators march to the Supreme Court for the 52nd annual March For Life in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 24, 2025. <span> <\/span><span>Bryan Dozier<span> \/ <\/span>Bryan Dozier\/Middle East Images via AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Hawleys have played key roles in advocating for rolling back abortion rights.<\/p>\n<p>Josh Hawley has a long record of opposing abortion and has recently been <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/HawleyMO\/status\/1998806068974240199\/photo\/1\">behind<\/a> a push to get Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ms.now\/opinion\/fda-abortion-pill-mifepristone-safety-study-trump-administration\">conduct a review of the safety data for mifepristone<\/a>the first of two pills used in medication abortion.<\/p>\n<p>More than 100 scientific studies have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2023\/04\/01\/health\/abortion-pill-safety.html\">concluded<\/a> that abortion pills are safe and effective, including when they are prescribed virtually and mailed to patients. But abortion opponents have long alleged, without supporting evidence,&nbsp;that the drugs are dangerous. Several, including Hawley, have recently rallied around a report from the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center purporting to show a higher-than-previously-reported rate of complications from the pills &mdash; though <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2025\/05\/12\/abortion-pill-medication-abortion-study-mifepristone\/\">experts have said<\/a> the methodology appears flawed and the findings inflated.<\/p>\n<p>Erin Hawley unsuccessfully <a href=\"http:\/\/Asalawyer,ErinarguedagainsttheFDAapprovalof\">argued<\/a> against the FDA approval of mifepristone before the Supreme Court last year, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2024\/02\/23\/erin-hawley-abortion-pill-supreme-court-00142493\">served as co-counsel<\/a> at the Alliance Defending Freedom in their ultimately successful argument to overrule<em> Roe v. Wade <\/em>in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Gallup polling <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/321143\/americans-stand-abortion.aspx\">shows<\/a> nearly half of all Americans &mdash; 49% &mdash;support abortion in all or most circumstances, and that about 60 percent support the availability of mifepristone as a prescription drug and oppose the overruling of <em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>. Research &mdash; including data <a href=\"https:\/\/societyfp.org\/research\/wecount\/wecount-june-2025-data\/\">released<\/a> this week from the Society of Family Planning &mdash; has consistently shown that the number of abortions has risen since the Supreme Court&rsquo;s <em>Dobbs<\/em> decision overruling <em>Roe<\/em>with abortion pills and the rise of telehealth playing key roles in expanding access.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;For years, Democrats have drowned out the pro-life narrative and overwhelmed the pro-life agenda. They&rsquo;ve raised and spent hundreds of millions on infrastructure, advocacy, and advertising &mdash;&nbsp;and it&rsquo;s taken a toll,&rdquo; the group&rsquo;s website says. &ldquo;The Love Life Initiative will remind Americans that life is sacred, life is good, and life is worth protecting.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ms.now\/news\/hawleys-launch-dark-money-anti-abortion-advertising-group\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dec. 12, 2025, 6:03 PM EST Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and his wife, Erin, a lawyer for the conservative legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, are launching a dark money group to fund anti-abortion ads across the country, they announced on Friday. The group, called Love Life Initiative, plans to run &ldquo;far-reaching advertising campaigns that promote [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}