The abortion industry has been well-funded since its inception, and since the fall of Roe v. Wade, it has enjoyed even more cash infusions from some of the wealthiest donors who choose to use their dollars to fund the deaths of human beings not yet born — particularly for women who are considered less wealthy.
The “new guard” of abortion donors as well as the “old guard” may openly express different reasons for supporting abortion access for impoverished women both in America and internationally — however, the result is the same: a limiting of certain populations (a.k.a. population control).
A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted the new “powerhouse donors” looking to influence upcoming elections and make abortion more accessible through massive donations.
The New Donors
One of the people highlighted was supermodel Karlie Kloss, who is married to Josh Kushner. Kushner is the brother of Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump and the son-in-law of President Trump. Kloss, who considers herself an avowed Democrat, is an outspoken supporter of abortion. She created the Gateway Coalition, a foundation that takes donations and uses them to keep abortion facilities open in Midwest states. Kloss told the Wall Street Journal she has been able to give more than $3 million to abortion facilities since its founding. “What’s going to happen in November is a very important front line on so many state levels, and certainly in the White House,” she told the news outlet.
Others mentioned were Wendy Schmidt, who is married to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt; Connie Ballmer, who is married to the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers; and Sheryl Sandberg, a tech executive who served on the Facebook board of directors until stepping down in May. These are established billionaires, using their wealth to ensure that less-wealthy women have abortions, instead of giving aid so women don’t feel they have no other choice but to kill their preborn children.
But the most notable name mentioned is Phoebe Gates… as in the daughter of Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft, and one of the wealthiest people in the world) and Melinda French Gates. (The couple divorced in 2021.) French Gates, a billionaire in her own right, is also a noted abortion donor. She recently left the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to focus more heavily on her own causes, including abortion. She has pledged to donate $200 million toward pro-abortion causes over the next two years alone.
Naturally, Phoebe is putting her money toward abortion, too. “For me, having freedom to make decisions about your future really kind of transcends everything,” she told the Wall Street Journal. She said her advocacy started when her mother told her to get angry about the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe, and then asked her, “What are you going to do about it?”
Phoebe Gates said she has been promoting state pro-abortion ballot initiatives, and giving to abortion organizations — like Just the Pill, a mail-order abortion business. She said she plans to give millions of dollars this year alone. “There’s a tangible chance to make a change here,” she said.
But who could be surprised? It is nothing new for billionaires to support abortion.
The Old Guard
From the very beginning, the abortion industry has been funded by the wealthiest Americans in the country — some of whom helped to created what has now become America’s largest abortion business, Planned Parenthood… which enjoyed over $1.5 billion in federal funding over just three years.
Planned Parenthood was founded by known eugenicist Margaret Sanger, originally as the American Birth Control League. Wealthy racists and eugenicists served on the board, including Lothrop Stoddard and Clarence Gamble.
Stoddard, an outspoken white supremacist and member of the Ku Klux Klan, was born into a wealthy, aristocratic family. Gamble, a eugenicist, was the heir to the Proctor and Gamble fortune. His family was so wealthy that Gamble was given $1 million for his 21st birthday in 1914 — an amount equal to over $31 million today. He often used Proctor and Gamble stock to promote birth control, abortion, and eugenics, and he founded Pathfinder International, a nonprofit organization focused on population control under the auspices of ‘reproductive health’ in places like Africa and South Asia. Both Stoddard and Gamble were heavily focused on limiting the population growth of certain people groups.
Other billionaire businesses have helped to fund abortion. The Rockefeller Foundation was influential in the eugenics movement, and created the Population Council after World War II. According to author Edwin Black, “The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.” This foundation continues to donate to abortion organizations today.
The Ford Foundation likewise has donated to Planned Parenthood for decades.
Present-day billionaires continue to prop up the abortion industry. They include Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, William Hewlett and David Packard (the founders of the Hewlett-Packard corporation), and more.
Gynuity Health Projects, which works to expand access to the abortion pill regimen and overturn safety standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), receives funding from the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Population Council, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Society for Family Planning, the Tara Health Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and more.
The manufacturer of the abortion pill regimen, Danco Laboratories, meanwhile, is also billionaire-funded, receiving donations from Bill and Melinda Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, the Ford Foundation, William Hewlett and David Packard, and more. And out-of-state billionaires have been spending millions to ensure that pro-abortion ballot initiatives pass in various states.
There’s no lie from the Wall Street Journal here: the abortion industry is continuing to enjoy massive funding from billionaires. The latest wave of these funders have the power and influence to, as Phoebe Gates said, make a change.
They could be spending their billions to help low-income women, or women in crisis pregnancies, have more options. They could be promoting better access to maternity care, promoting family leave options, better resources for pregnant and parenting students, and more… but instead, they largely choose to promote the killing of the most vulnerable population by abortion.
