London anti-abortion march fuelled by US ‘hate group’

A major anti-abortion march taking place in London this week is being heavily influenced by US Christian right group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), raising concerns about the import of anti-gender fundamentalism to the UK. 

Good Law Project can reveal that over half of the speakers in London’s March for Life 2025 itinerary have direct links to ADF, an Arizona-based Christian legal organisation that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group”.

ADF was instrumental in the landmark Supreme Court case overturning federal abortion rights in 2022. It also supports US states banning gender-affirming care for young people.

Eight of the thirteen people listed as giving speeches or hosting panels have links to ADF. This includes March for Life UK’s co-director Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, ADF’s lawyer in Strasbourg Lorcán Price, and Northern Irish MP Carla Lockhart.

The march has grown since its launch in 2013, with organisers claiming that between 8,000 and 10,000 people attended last year. This weekend, US groups including Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising and 40 Days for Life will be lining up alongside British anti-gender outfits such as the Christian Institute.

Among the event’s religious leaders is Andrea Williams, co-founder of Christian Concern, a UK group which also campaigns against banning LGBTQ+ conversion therapy and has worked directly with ADF.

Christian Concern told us that it “works alongside many organisations that share a commitment to defending fundamental freedoms” and that it would be “profoundly wrong…for the state to criminalise prayer, preaching, or therapeutic support offered to those who request it”.

Good Law Project has also found religious figures participating include Bishops Patrick McKinney and Ralph Heskett, both accused of mishandling sexual abuse cases, as well as Aaron Edwards – a pastor dismissed from an academic role and threatened with a counter-terrorism referral following a tweet claiming “Homosexuality is invading the church.”

McKinney said he “immediately met with the complainant” in the sexual abuse case he is accused of mishandling, and “initiated a canonical investigation, in accordance with the church’s Code of Canon Law”. And Edwards said the tweet was “manifestly” not homophobic and that “the college’s claim was that the incidental disrepute is the reason I was fired, not because I had said something ‘homophobic’.” Heskett did not respond to our request for comment.

ADF has poured money into the UK over recent years, spending over £1m in 2024. According to Democracy for Sale, some of its funding comes from US conservatives such as Charles Koch and the Morgan Stanley Foundation.

The group has also been at the forefront of attacks on buffer zones, representing activists in the US, the UK and Europe who have breached laws protecting women seeking abortion healthcare from harassment.

The issue has become a flashpoint in relations between the US and the UK, with US Vice-President JD Vance arguing that buffer zones represent a “backslide” in British citizens’ fundamental liberties. He has also been accused of spreading misinformation which suggested the Scottish government had warned residents within buffer zones that “even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law”.

While MPs voted in favour of abortion decriminalisation in England and Wales in June, it has not yet been signed into law. The amendment also does not fully decriminalise abortion, and does not protect buffer zones and safe access to abortion clinics as a human right. 

Speakers at London’s March for Life include leading figures in the ongoing assault on buffer zones in the UK. In 2023, ADF supported March for Life UK’s co-director Isabel Vaughan-Spruce after she was arrested twice for praying outside abortion clinics, leading to charges being dropped. ADF then made a successful claim against West Midlands Police for her arrests. 

Livia Tossici-Bolt, another buffer zone protester supported by ADF, is also speaking at the event. The US state department sent a delegation in March to meet Tossici-Bolt and ADF’s UK arm. This followed Trump’s pardon of anti-abortion activists, announced at March for Life in the US just four days after his inauguration. 

Other speakers include the MP Carla Lockhart, who has supported ADF cases and is chair of the Pro-Life All-Party Parliamentary Group, and former MP Fiona Bruce, who received funding from ADF UK in 2023 for a speaking engagement.

ADF and March for Life UK did not respond to our request for comment, or questions about who funds the march.

Kerry Abel, chair of Abortion Rights, has been organising counter-protests against the March for Life in London for ten years. She described the event with its slogan “From conception no exception” as “particularly egregious,” and “ignoring the lived reality of so many women and pregnant people”.

Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, anti-abortion campaigners in the UK have become “emboldened”, Abel added. “We have seen far-right British political figures borrow cynically from the rightwing US playbook by ramping up rhetoric about abortion.”