End Deportations Belfast, Alliance for Choice and Corporate Watch have joined forces to uncover some of the shady links and dark money connected to Stanton Healthcare Belfast, a rogue ‘crisis pregnancy’ centre that’s been operating in the north of Ireland since 2016.

While investigating, we found:

• Reproductive and migrants’ rights groups have accused Stanton Belfast of presenting itself as a health and abortion centre, with numerous clients reporting having experienced bullying, coercion and harassment to dissuade them from terminating their pregnancies.
• Case studies on one of Stanton’s websites boast about working with Sudanese and Ukrainian women. Activists are concerned that the organisation is targeting vulnerable women coming from war zones.
• Stanton Belfast’s parent organisation is US evangelical firm, Stanton Healthcare International, which along with its funders, has deep links to far-right, anti-abortion and anti-LGBT causes.

Anti-abortion centre masquerades as women’s health clinic in Belfast

Stanton Healthcare opened its doors in Belfast in 2016, three years before abortion was decriminalised in the six counties. The charity has been blamed for portraying itself as a health centre, with anecdotal reports of bullying, coercion and harassment rife. Nevertheless, if you Google ‘Abortion Belfast’, the centre comes up as one of the top search results.

Numerous grassroots campaigners spoke to Corporate Watch about the experiences of women and pregnant people seeking natal, abortion and other reproductive support locally. They detailed alarming reports from service users of how Stanton had arranged and performed unnecessary ultrasounds, and provided people with wholly inaccurate and false information about the legality and provision of abortion in the north of Ireland (NI). They report that the centre has provided unwitting patients with false medical information about their gestation and the abortion procedure. People have disclosed having been prayed at, been given Bibles, and having been told by Stanton personnel that they would report the abortion to their friends and family – and even that it may be necessary to contact the police.

Alliance For Choice outside Stanton Belfast on International Safe Abortion Day 2023

Clients have reported to Alliance For Choice that in addition to being given deeply upsetting false information about abortion risks – including about cancer – they were sent scan pictures after their appointment with Stanton, which they did not request and gave no permission for. Numerous women stated that throughout their engagement with the centre, it was Stanton’s sole objective to dissuade them from their decision by using emotionally manipulative tactics, such as telling them they were ‘killing’ or ‘murdering’ their child. Many of the women reported that at no stage did Stanton advise they were not an abortion clinic, instead offering a second appointment or continuing with tactics of reproductive coercion.

Alliance For Choice Belfast

Stanton claims to provide medical information and advice, ‘pregnancy advisers’, ultrasounds, pregnancy and STD tests, and post-abortion care. A spokesperson for Alliance for Choice Belfast explained that while the Regulation & Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) is the medical governing body in NI, Stanton falls outside RQIA. This means there is no licensing required for the sonographer, and no official inspections or oversight of the centre’s ‘medical’ activities.

On the Charity Commission’s website, the centre states that one of its main objectives is to support people’s self-respect and wellbeing by helping them renew a “sense of the virtue of chastity and the intrinsic value and dignity of the human body”.

Co-founder and current trustee, Anne McCloskey, was a GP until she was suspended from practicing in 2021 by an independent medical regulator for medical misconduct and having a criminal conviction. A January 2025 hearing extended the suspension until at least early 2026.

End Deportations Belfast

Vile tactics on our doorsteps

Stories of anti-abortion organisations targeting vulnerable and marginalised women are common, and according to Stanton Edinburgh’s 2024 submissions to Companies House (trading as SHE Pregnancy Support), the majority of its clients are recent arrivals to Scotland who mostly “lack knowledge of the UK health system” and are usually living in its cities’ most deprived areas. Stanton Edinburgh’s own case studies tell of its work with Sudanese and Ukrainian refugee women fleeing war zones. Unlike its Belfast affiliate, the Scottish centre is registered as both a charity and a private company. Activists in Belfast cite concerns that Stanton could be targeting women fleeing conflict, preying on vulnerable new arrivals yet to get to grips with the landscape of support and services available to them.

According to Companies House, Stanton Healthcare (East of Scotland) was dissolved in its current form in May 2025.

Stanton’s Origins – From Idaho to Belfast

To better understand Stanton Belfast, it’s important to look at the history, financials, and connections of its parent organisation and affiliates.

The Belfast centre became the first international branch of the US-born Stanton Healthcare International (SHI), an organisation that states that it “seeks to replace abortion businesses around the world”. Founded in 2006 by Brandi Swindell, SHI is unironically named after Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an American feminist icon who condemned forced maternity. The centre has since expanded from its Idaho base, with mobile ‘clinics’ and centres now also operating in Oregon and Southern California. SHI is a part of Generation Life, Inc. – a non-profit, tax-exempt organisation registered in the US, whose principal director is also Swindell. According to public records, Generation Life shares a founder, director, its address, and phone number with SHI, making the organisations hard to differentiate.

The opening ceremony for Stanton Belfast was attended by several notable anti-choice activists, including founder of Precious Life in Belfast, Bernadette Smyth; New Jersey congressman, Chris Smith; and two well-known figures in the US right-wing, anti-choice movement, Swindells and Reverend Patrick Mahoney.

At the time, a Dr. Vicki Wooll was named as Stanton Belfast’s ‘medical director’, however there is no record of anyone with this name on the General Medical Council’s (GMC) register – the independent regulator for medical professionals in the UK. Yet she is registered as a physician in the US where she supports ConservativesOf PAC, a pro-life organisation that explicitly opposes “socialism, communism, progressivism and fascism”. In 2021, Wooll was issued with a letter of concern by the Idaho Board of Medicine for giving false and misleading medical information, including linking 5G to Covid-19.

SHI receives funding from many sources and because of the nature of financial reporting regulations in the US, it’s often difficult to follow the money. What we do know is that several grant making organisations donate to Generation Life annually. In 2023, these included (however, were not limited to) the American Online Giving Foundation and the Schwab Charitable Fund.

Generation Life Inc.

SHI’s parent organisation, Generation Life Inc., is a youth-orientated project aimed at outreach, education, the promotion of chastity and ending abortion. According to its own accounts, its biggest revenue stream is from contributions, gifts and grants, which totalled $1.3m (£948k) in 2023. Between 2019-2023, donations received by the organisation were $5.5m (£4m). Total net assets were $3.1m (£2.3) in 2023.

Through looking at public tax filings in the US we can get a feeling of who is gifting money to Generation Life. Keeping in mind that the following is just a snapshot and by no means a summary of the organisation’s largest donors, between 2022 and 2023 the organisation received combined funding of $64.5k (£47k) from four charitable bodies: the Renaissance Charitable Foundation, the American Online Giving Foundation, the American Endowment Foundation, and the Schwab Charitable Fund (DAFgiving360). The American Endowment Foundation is known to finance both liberal and right-wing causes, including the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Trump’s controversial Project 2025, while Renaissance Charitable Foundation is a billion dollar, donor-advised fund with a religious agenda that granted the American Endowment Foundation a massive $6.5m (£4.7m) in 2022 alone.

Donor-advised funds and the dark money behind Stanton

Let’s take a closer look at two of the above dark money funds behind SHI, the innocuously named Schwab Charitable Fund, and American Online Giving Foundation. In mid-2024,  Schwab changed its name to DAFgiving360 to better reflect its activities as a donor-advised fund (DAF). This is a specific type of charitable investment body that facilitates the secret funnelling of money to select organisations. Wealthy donors can invest their cash (which is tax deductible) into the account, and due to a loophole in US charitable law can anonymously donate it to select organisations through the fund; where this is used to influence political groups, this is known as dark money.

DAFgiving360 finances right-wing causes through several of its funds, including through donations made to Leonard Leo’s 85 Fund. Leo is a lawyer who is one of the men said to be responsible for the right-wing supermajority in the US Supreme Courts, and whose fund has financed racist, transphobic, and voter fraud misinformation campaigns. Other conservative religious founders of 85 Fund have financed groups opposing abortion and LGBT rights. These DAF accounts are described by some commentators as “a legal version of money laundering”, enabling the super-rich to donate money in secret.

Interestingly, the money seems to flow both directions, with Leo’s Marble Freedom Trust annually financing the DAFgiving360 fund to the tune of at least $18m. This so-called “dark money group” also supports another of SHI’s shady funders – the Knights Of Columbus Charitable Fund Inc.

Besides DAFgiving360, the second aforementioned SHI donor (via Generation Life) is the American Online Giving Foundation, which finances multiple far-right groups, such as the Conservative Partnership Institute, an elite network of Trump and MAGA-linked individuals; and America First Legal – a legal group founded by Stephen Miller, the man known for some of Trump’s most racist and Islamophobic policies.

Stanton’s key people

Brandi Swindell, founder and CEO of SHI, is a well-known anti-abortion activist who is also co-founder and former national director of Generation Life.  She has said that she wants to end Planned Parenthood in the US, has reportedly worked with Irish anti-choice group, Youth Defence, and has campaigned against LGBT+ literature in libraries.

Brandi Swindell, founder and CEO of Stanton Healthcare International

She cut her teeth on the Christian direct action group, Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust (‘Survivors’). Survivors was set up by hardcore anti-choice activist Jeff White in 1998 to groom young people into the movement.

White is a key member of a violent wing of the movement in the US. His daughter, Danielle White (also known as Danielle Versluys), is Chief Operations Officer of Stanton International, and along with Swindell, came through the Survivors programme as a youth organiser. She has said that women with complications should deliver a baby naturally, regardless of the circumstances.

Before Survivors, White senior was national director of another radical anti-abortion organisation – Operation Rescue (more below), between 1988-1998.

SHI’s Chief Strategy Officer, Reverend Patrick Mahoney, founded the Christian Defense Coalition which is listed by non-profit People for the American Way on their watchlist of far-right groups. In Jan 2025, Mahoney spoke for the pro-life movement when he said it was looking forward to working with the Trump administration and DOGE to replace Planned Parenthood.

Operation Rescue and militant anti-abortion activism in the US

Founded in 1987 by evangelical preacher and far-right activist, Randall Terry, Operation Rescue is another youth-focused group with close links to SHI. A key player in the militant wing of anti-abortion activism, evidence indicates that Operation Rescue is seen as a terrorist organisation by the US Army and also appears on the Right Wing Watch list of groups.

Randall Terry at a Constitution Party presidential election debate in 2024

Terry once said he wanted Planned Parenthood and its “homosexual-recruiting friends” totally wiped out. He is no stranger to controversy and has been closely involved with anti-LGBT+ rights and anti-contraception organisations, including the US rightwing Christian group, Human Life International, which funds international campaigns against women’s and LGBT rights.

Terry ran for president in the 2024 US election with the ultra-conservative Constitution Party, the stated aims of which include restoring “jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations”. According to the party, this includes limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman. When speaking on immigration, the party has referred to migrants as “people with low standards of living” that are a drain on the country and an “invasion” that should be stopped.

The legal arm of the movement: Alliance Defending Freedom

SHI has close ties to a notable legal pillar of the anti-choice ecosystem in the US, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). This prolific Christian-right law firm, which works closely with Trump, shares major funders, event platforms, and even an advisory board member with Swindell’s organisation.

US-based ADF is a legal advocacy, strategic litigation, lobbying and training organisation that was heavily involved in the 2022 case that saw Roe v. Wade overturned. This historic ruling ended the constitutional right to abortion in the US, meaning the loss of vital abortion services and bodily autonomy. The organisation has ramped up funding of UK anti-abortion groups and says it gives grants and training to support legal cases nationally and internationally. The firm is said to make an annual revenue of over $100m (£75m).

Praying at a Defund Planned Parenthood protest with Alliance Defending Freedom in 2015

Former president and CEO of ADF, Catherine Glenn Foster – a solicitor heavily involved in anti-abortion cases in the US – spent time on SHI’s advisory board. After leaving ADF she became CEO of Americans United for Life, another prominent pro-life legal organisation that claims to have been involved in every anti-abortion case to appear before the Supreme Court since Roe v. Wade.

ADF’s ambitions don’t stop at banning abortion, and the firm has been involved in pushing many anti-LGBT+ and anti-trans legal challenges since its foundation in 1994. It also appears on a list of right-wing extremist groups compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Members of SHI and ADF pop up regularly together at events and in 2016 appeared at a European anti-abortion forum hosting the legal advocacy organisation. A few years later, SHI’s CEO and the senior legal communications officer of ADF subsidiary, ADF International, came together to deliver part of an ‘educational’, weekend-long event for women in the UK.

Heartbeat International

Another entity in SHI’s intricate web of connections is Heartbeat International, a powerful lobby group that once had former vice president, Mike Pence, speak at its event. It funds so-called crisis pregnancy centres all over the world, including thousands in the US. These centres are usually run by activists whose aim is to stop people getting abortions, and sometimes even contraception. Tactics include lying, coercion, the spreading of misinformation and false medical claims.

Officially, SHI is an affiliate of Heartbeat, and in 2024 SHI staff attended a training event run by the group it calls ‘family’. In an undercover documentary about the unseen world of US crisis pregnancy centres, one reporter was told that Stanton stores sensitive data on Heartbeat’s software.

Reports show that pregnant minors from migrant backgrounds have been referred to Heartbeat International while in federal custody.

Local issue, international strategy

Stanton in Edinburgh claims that the majority of its clients are from outside of the UK, naming countries such as Nigeria, Sudan, Poland, Ukraine, Pakistan, Ghana and Bulgaria, and makes clear that it works with refugees. This begs the question as to why right-wing evangelical organisations are allowed to run fake medical centres that target vulnerable migrants.

The activities of bogus crisis pregnancy centres in both Belfast and Edinburgh point to an international strategy and growing movement to push back against hard-won rights and freedoms for LGBT+ people, for racial and reproductive justice, and for women’s health.

The recent assassination of the US pro-choice politician Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the revelation that the suspect is a far-right evangelical Christian (and public fan of ADF), highlights the real consequences of this growing anti-abortion and LGBT rights ideology.

Following the money, people and organisations behind these centres shows just how much power and wealth stands behind them, and underscores the importance of fighting back against this conservative revival through vocal campaigning and solidarity with those most at risk.

Find out more about how you can get involved locally by checking out End Deportations Belfast, a campaign group founded in 2019, opposing border regimes, detention and deportation in the north of Ireland, and Alliance For Choice, campaigning for free, safe, legal, local abortion care for anyone who wants or needs it.