Right-Wing Dark Money Funded Kansas’s Failed Anti-Abortion Campaign
Leonard Leo’s massive conservative dark money network is quietly working behind the scenes to try to eliminate abortion protections at the state level.

Abortion rights protesters along 15th Street near Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington DC, on May 14, 2022. (Elvert Barnes Photography / Wikimedia Commons)
The dark money network led by conservative Supreme Court architect Leonard Leo financed the nonprofit that bankrolled a misleading text message campaign pretending a Kansas ballot measure would “give women a choice,” when it actually would have eliminated state abortion protections.
New tax documents hint at how Leo’s network has been quietly working to influence abortion policy in the states utilizing his historic $1.6 billion dark money fund, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade and ending federal protections for abortion rights. As President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the six justices making up the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority.
Leo’s network donated $1.7 million to CatholicVote Civic Action, a conservative Catholic advocacy group, between July 2021 and June 2022, according to a newly obtained tax return.