If you or your children have ever watched programming on PBS, you are probably familiar with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s name. But what you may not know is that the foundation doesn’t just support public broadcasting; it is a large contributor to Big Abortion, and has also been funding media outlets and/or their key foundations and a host of journalism schools and projects.
Media outlets taking grants from MacArthur Foundation include NPR Radio, Poynter, and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).
While the MacArthur Foundation claims online to “boldly” invest in “creative solutions to urgent challenges, sparking hope for our future,” the Foundation has funded multiple pro-abortion groups. There is no “hope” in the deliberate targeting and violent killing of innocent preborn children in the womb.
Pro-abortion Groups
The Foundation funds the following pro-abortion groups:
The Bixby Center for Global and Reproductive Health
- The Bixby Center is a program through the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) which receives millions in government dollars and trains abortion providers. Bixby was granted over $2.1 million ($2,119,000) between 2003 and 2008 by the MacArthur Foundation. Bixby claims to be “one of the few research institutions to unflinchingly address abortion, investigating multidimensional aspects of abortion care in the United States and globally.”
The Center for Reproductive Rights
- According to the MacArthur Foundation’s website, between 1992 and 2016, the foundation gave the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights (CFRR) more than $6 million ($6,097,500). CFRR was founded in 1992 by Janet Benshoof and was created after Benshoof “received a $280,000 ‘genius’ grant from the MacArthur Foundation.” Benshoof “established what was then known as the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy [CRLP].”
The Guttmacher Institute
- “MacArthur participated in a consortium of donors to support the Guttmacher Institute to increase the evidence on abortion, unintended pregnancy, and contraception,” a report from the MacArthur Foundation’s Population and Reproductive Health Program claimed. Between 1986 and 2015, MacArthur granted Planned Parenthood’s former “special affiliate,” the Guttmacher Institute, $4.3 million ($4,356,584).
Gynuity Health Projects (GHP)
- The MacArthur Foundation’s website shows that nearly $1.9 million ($1,850,000) was granted to Gynuity Health Projects (GHP), otherwise known as GHP Solutions, LLC., between 2005 and 2016. Gynuity has been behind multiple clinical trials on the abortion pill. In 2015, GHP sponsored its ever-expanding TelAbortion clinical trials (referred to by Fast Company as a “workaround” to the Food and Drug Administration’s REMS safety system) to dispense the abortion pill via mail order. GHP funders include the Buffett, Gates, and Packard Foundations (more here) as well as the Population Council. According to 990s on file with ProPublica, the National Abortion Federation (NAF), the MacArthur Foundation, and Hopewell Foundation have all funded Gynuity.
OpenDemocracy
- In 2007, MacArthur granted OpenDemocracy $40,000. This left-leaning group, which once referred to the abortion pill as a “revolution for women’s reproductive rights,” has also published hit pieces attacking Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) by falsely labeling the protocol as “dangerous” or “unproven,” even referring to women who seek out the treatment as “guinea pigs.”
Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood is by far the largest abortion corporation in the United States. A search at the organization’s grants website indicates that the MacArthur Foundation has contributed in total over $2.8 million, as follows:
- Planned Parenthood of Illinois: $90,000 (1991-2017).
- International Planned Parenthood Federation: $2,220,000 (2002-2012)
- Planned Parenthood Federation of America: $450,000 (1985).
- Planned Parenthood of the Palm Beach Area: $50,000 (1987).
The Population Council
- The MacArthur Foundation’s website reveals it granted more than $19 million ($19,022,000) to the Population Council, a eugenics-based organization founded by John D. Rockefeller III, from 1989 to 2023. The Population Council brought the abortion pill into the U.S. and later set up Danco Laboratories, LLC, as a sub-licensee of the Population Council. Shortly after establishing Danco to manufacture the pill, they set up a system through which it would also receive royalties from its sales. Today, the Population Council is funded by the Gates, Buffett, and Packard Foundations, among many others — including the Ford, Hewlett, MacArthur, and Kellogg Foundations.
Other pro-abortion groups funded by MacArthur
- Catholics for Choice: over $3 million ($3,024,500) from 1991-2011
- IPAS: over $7 million ($7,320,000) from 1992-2020
- National Abortion Rights Action League Foundation: $75,000 (1992-1995)
- Pathfinder International: over $21 million ($21,707,000) from 1986 – 2021
- United Nations Population Fund: over $3 million ($3,312,000) from 2002-2017
- University of California San Francisco (UCSF): the foundation has granted money to the University of California system for various programs.
- World Health Organization (WHO): $6,495,000 (1999-2017).
MacArthur Foundation has also funded abortion studies, including but not limited to:
- Improving access to safe abortion in a rural primary care setting in India: experience of a service delivery intervention (here).
- Provision of medical methods of abortion in facilities in India in 2015: A six state comparison (here).
- Provision of Abortion and Postabortion Services in Assam, 2015 (here).
In addition, the MacArthur Foundation named Diana Greene Foster, a pro-abortion researcher who wrote the heavily debunked Turnaway Study, and a professor at the pro-abortion Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Loretta Ross, founder of the pro-abortion group Sister Song, was named a MacArthur Fellow the previous year.
Media Outlets
A grants search on the organization’s website also revealed that the organization was funding the following media outlets:
Futuro Media Group
Futuro Media Group claims to be “an independent, nonprofit organization producing multimedia journalism that explores and gives a critical voice to the diversity of the American experience.” But the media group has also published multiple articles with a pro-abortion slant, including the false suggestion that pro-life pregnancy help centers are “deceptive.” Between 2013 and 2021, MacArthur granted them $3,650,000.
Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF)
KFF is formerly known as The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, or the Kaiser Family Foundation, and it is far from unbiased on abortion. Between 1990 and 2023, the MacArthur Foundation granted KFF $41,000.
As Live Action News previously reported, one of Kaiser’s Board of Trustees is Kathleen Sebelius, the former pro-abortion Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under Barack Obama, who was financially supported, in part, by tainted dollars sent by late-term abortionist George Tiller.
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) as well as The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation were not only named past recipients of Planned Parenthood’s infamous PPFA Maggie Award (named after eugenicist founder Margaret Sanger), but according to some reports, the Kaiser Family Foundation was described as one of the original investors in the abortion pill, RU-486, when it was first introduced into the United States through the Population Council. In addition, Kaiser has sponsored studies on multiple uses of the abortion pill.
Even more damning is that Kaiser’s own website lists multiple philanthropists as “funders,” including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation – all known for funding Big Abortion.
National Public Radio (NPR)
Between 1999 and 2002, MacArthur granted $7 million to the NPR Foundation. In addition, between 1985 and 2020, they also granted $29,938,443 to National Public Radio in D.C. The George Soros-funded National Public Radio (NPR) is among the media outlets which failed to correctly cover a previous White House summit on social media censorship where Live Action’s president Lila Rose was in attendance.
New York Times
The MacArthur Foundation contributed $50,000 to The New York Times Communities Fund to “to maximize impact and motivate a community of informed donors” and to “capitalize on the Times’s extended reach, increasingly diverse platform, and credibility to solicit more support for high-impact programs that assist our global community.” The fund, according to the MacArthur Foundation, was “established in 1911 as The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund to encourage the paper’s readers to help their neighbors in need,” the group claimed. But “In 2023, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund updated its name to The New York Times Communities Fund as part of an effort to reflect a more modern philanthropic approach. The mission of The Fund remains unchanged,” NYT’s Fund website stated.
The Poynter Institute
In 2018, The Poynter Institute, “a nonprofit school for journalists based in St. Petersburg, Fla., … acquired direct ownership of PolitiFact” according to Politifact. Poynter is part of Facebook’s alleged third-party group of fact checkers, the “International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN)” — a unit of the Poynter Institute. Poynter is also funded by known abortion philanthropists such as the Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. PolitiFact itself has also been funded by the Gates and Ford Foundations. And, between 2013 and 2022, MacArthur granted Poynter $1,625,000.
Interestingly enough, Live Action and Lila Rose’s Facebook pages have been the target of fact checks published by Poynter or PolitiFact.
Others
- British Broadcasting Corporation: $2,500,000 (2018-2021)
- ProPublica: $7,050,000 (2007 -2022)
Any financial partnership between Big Media and abortion philanthropists is likely to influence reporting on important matters before the voting public, and it should concern us all.
