Backgrounder: Charlotte Lozier Institute, the Group at the Center of the Retracted Mifepristone Studies
This week the U.S. Supreme Court is holding an oral argument about access to medication abortion in a case called Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. Food and Drug Administration. The Court’s decision will determine whether or not Americans will continue to have access to the abortion pill mifepristone, which has become a vital medicine in the wake of the Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, particularly in states where surgical abortions are now inaccessible.
This access is essential to allowing Americans to maintain the freedom to make health decisions for themselves and their future.
The Court decided to hear the mifepristone case after a notorious far-right federal judge in Texas issued an edict in April 2023 revoking the FDA’s 23-year approval of the pill, restricting how the pill is delivered and distributed. Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee with ties to Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society, previously worked for an anti-abortion group and lied by deliberate omission during his nomination process by hiding from the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had recently co-authored an attack on abortion rights.
To justify his ruling overturning the FDA’s decision on the safety of mifepristone, Judge Kacsmaryk cited two studies attempting to claim that mifepristone is dangerous, despite multiple peer-reviewed studies showing mifepristone to be one of the safest and most widely used abortion methods in the U.S. The studies were written by an employee of Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who failed to disclose that tie to the publisher. Following the ruling, Sage Publications retracted the articles–due largely to their lack of scientific method and rigor.
What Is the Charlotte Lozier Institute?
The Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) is the “research and education” arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA-PLA)—a 501(c)(3) anti-abortion group that has had financial ties to Leonard Leo and Charles Koch. SBA-PLA, which seeks to ban abortion, launched CLI in 2011 as the “anti-abortion counter” to the widely trusted Guttmacher Institute.
CLI often resorts to the use of alarmist claims to spread disinformation on abortion care. It publishes annual reports that both applaud and ostensibly do damage control for state-level abortion restrictions. For example, the most recent report claimed that state abortion laws will not imprison anyone who receives abortion care, even though women are already being criminally charged and doctors and other health care providers are subject to potential criminal charges in addition to loss of their medical licenses in some states.
CLI staffers have been called by Republicans to testify before Congress and peddle their medical misinformation. The group has also submitted amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving reproductive rights, including cases that oppose surrogacy, defend pregnancy crisis centers that spread misinformation about abortion, and attack Planned Parenthood.
Ties to Leo and Koch
SBA-PLA and CLI have received millions of dollars over the years, with their most recent 990 filings showing an annual combined revenue of approximately $30 million in 2022, a third of which was generated by CLI. SBA-PLA has received significant funding from dark money pass-through groups that have been tied to the oil mogul Charles Koch. Despite Koch’s claims of supporting reproductive rights, his network gave over $1.3 million from 2013-2017 to SBA, an anti-abortion group, for “general support.”
SBA has also been funded by dark money groups connected to Leonard Leo. For example, SBA has received money from several shell groups linked to Leonard Leo—such as Judicial Crisis Network/Concord, The 85 Fund/Judicial Education Project, Wellspring Committee, and America Engaged. In 2017, SBA gave Leo the Distinguished Leader Award at their annual gala “for [his] work on confirming Justice Gorsuch.” Leo is infamous for packing the Supreme Court with judges hand-picked to overturn Roe.
Charlotte Lozier’s Known Funders
In 2022, CLI received $3.3 million from some of the same Donor Advised Funds deployed by Leo, including almost $1,472,410 from Schwab Charitable Fund, $1,346,250 from National Christian Charitable Foundation Inc, $112,000 from Vanguard, and $374,413 from Fidelity. Leo has deployed millions that originate with Marble Freedom Trust and pass through Schwab, Fidelity, and other DAFs to obscure his money trail. Leo’s groups are now one of the biggest users of DonorsTrust, for example.
Other Known Anti-Abortion Funders include:
Ken Eldred, USATransform’s chairman, was the primary financial backer of United in Purpose (UIP), a far-right data harvesting group that honed in on thousands of churches in order to “strategically cultivat[e] support for a variety of pro-life, pro-family, limited government candidates in swing states”
Starting in 2019, USATransform was listed as a “related tax-exempt” organization on UIP’s IRS filings. UIP has not filed taxes since 2020 but is still listed as such on USATransform’s latest filing.
In addition to data harvesting, UIP also bestowed far-right leaders like Leonard Leo, Frank Gaffney, and Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn with their invented awards, which were presented by Ginni Thomas. Thomas is the“head” of the shell group “Liberty Consulting” and is married to Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been exposed for failing to disclose lavish gifts from ultra wealthy benefactors with an agenda before the Court.
ADF has used “research” from CLI in their legal attacks on the medical abortion pill mifepristone and included the now debunked studies as “evidence” on their website.
The net assets for this far-right group have been valued at over $1 billion for the better part of a decade and have distributed millions of dollars in grants to far-right groups in support of their efforts.
The Leo-Tied 85 Fund/Judicial Education Project: 2020 $175K
This is a core Leonard-Leo group. CLI’s most recent IRS filing also reveals continued financial ties to Leonard Leo through his for-profit firm, CRC Advisors. CRI paid CRC over $200K in 2022. Leo is under investigation by D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb after a watchdog group filed a complaint against him for allegedly violating laws that prohibit the use of charities for personal enrichment. Leonard Leo’s nonprofit network has funneled over $104 million into Leo’s for-profit consulting firm CRC Advisors.
Other Fundamentalist Funders Include:
The Father’s Table Foundation, a family foundation built from the profits of a cheesecake company, has contributed more than $1.1 million to CLI between 2014 and 2022. The foundation has given largely to religious and anti-abortion causes.
The Gianforte Family Trust, managed by Susan Gianforte who is married to Montana Governor Greg Gianforte, contributed $570,000 to CLI between 2015 and 2020. Greg Gianforte has donated to white nationalists and anti-government extremists, according to Rewire News Group, and was charged with assaulting a reporter. He also urged the Montana Supreme Court to reconsider the legal precedent protecting abortion rights in Montana.
The Boyd and Joan Kelly Charitable Foundation gave $115,000 to CLI between 2017 and 2022. The foundation’s officers are Jack and Carlyn Hill of Lynchberg, Virginia. Jack Hill runs his own ministry. The foundation also contributed to ADF, First Liberty Institute, Hillsdale College, Judicial Watch, and other far-right dark money groups in 2022.
More nominal amounts came from the Diocese of Phoenix ( $10K in 2023), the Christian Community Foundation Inc. ($23.5K in 2022), the Community Foundation of Acadiana: $20K in 2021 and $20K in 2020), the Charles and Mary Crossed Foundation ($50K in 2022 and $10K in 2021), and Mercy Works Foundation Inc. ($60K in 2020 and $25K in 2022).
CLI’s Key Staffers
Charles “Chuck” Donovan. Donovan, an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ operative, is CLI’s president. He worked for the Family Research Council (FRC), which is designated as a “hate group” by theSouthern Poverty Law Center, for almost two decades. He previously worked at the Heritage Foundation and the National Right to Life Committee, and he was a writer for Ronald Reagan.
Donovan has claimed that cutting funding to Planned Parenthood would benefit American women and children, despite research proving that PP centers are better equipped to provide a family planning safety net, with timely and high-quality contraceptive care to more women than any other publicly funded providers. He also claimed that legalizing gay marriage would “accelerate the weakening of civil society,” demonizing the LGBTQ community and advocating against their equal rights.
Stephen M. Billy. Billy was hired as CLI’s executive director in 2021. He worked for the Trump administration from 2017-2020 in various capacities, including as a senior advisor at the White House Office of Management and Budget, deputy chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, and deputy chief of staff at the Bureau of Industry and Security.
David Prentice. Prentice is CLI’s former vice president of research and was listed as such in the most recently available IRS filings, but is currently listed as a “guest contributor” on CLI’s website. As a biochemist he has advocated against the use of stem cells and fetal tissue in research and spread disinformation on this topic when he testified before Congress in 2018.
James Studnicki: Studnicki is the vice president and director of data analytics at CLI and is at the center of the recently-discredited and retracted studies used to attack access to mifepristone in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA case. Studnicki was the lead author on the studies relied on by Michael Kacsmaryk in his decision against the FDA’s approval of mifepristone more than two decades ago.
Following Sage’s retraction of Studnick’s studies, SBA-PLA/CLI went into damage control mode and launched a website filled with anti-abortion claims called https://assaultonscience.org/
The website includes call to action items and a disproportionate emphasis on the “undisclosed conflicts of interest” charge made by Sage. The site also accuses Sage and other scientific journals of being funded by pro-abortion groups, claiming that is why their scientifically unsound research was retracted.
Ingrid Skop. Skop is described as CLI’s “director for medical affairs.” She has also spread misinformation on the effectiveness of the over-the-counter contraceptive pill and falsely conflated contraceptive pills with abortifacients. In an interview, Skop—the same doctor who testified in support of Texas’ extreme anti-abortion law—claimed that there are safety concerns with Opill as an “abortifacient,” even though Opill is not an abortifacient. Its purpose is to stop pregnancy from occurring, not eliminate pregnancies.
Notably, CLI has also spun information about “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs). CPCs, which have been funded by anti-abortion hedge funders like Sean Fieler have frequently been accused of misrepresenting themselves as medical centers that provide abortion care to lure people who are pregnant and considering abortion. CPCs have repeatedly been accused of using misinformation about biology and treatment as well as manipulative emotional tactics to pressure Americans not to exercise their right to abortion.
Despite that track record, CLI claimed in an NBC News interview that CPCs give people “accurate information on adoption, parenting education classes, and prenatal health services.” NBC made a note in the article that SBA/CLI “does not fund or manage CPCs.” However, in 2022, SBA-PLA registered a nonstock corporation entity under a fictitious name, “HER Plan,” which connects people to CPCs and other anti-abortion groups in the states.