President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order freezing federal funding of Planned Parenthood and other groups that conduct abortions. This is a significant victory for the pro-life movement despite recent setbacks at the ballot box. For example, in last year’s presidential election, Trump won Arizona’s electoral college votes, but pro-lifers suffered a stinging defeat with the passage of a ballot measure to enshrine abortion in the state constitution. Why the discrepancy? One overlooked factor was the “Voters’ Right to Know Act,” a complex donor disclosure regime which suppressed support for the state’s pro-life law.
The misleadingly titled Voters’ Right to Know Act was passed via Prop 211 in 2022 after proponents claimed the measure would bring transparency to so-called “dark money.” However, the law’s real targets were conservative nonprofits that promote conservative policy priorities. Under Prop 211, these advocacy organizations are required to disclose both their own donors and the donors to other nonprofits that are contributors, a scheme called “original source disclosure.” The proposal has since been introduced as legislation in numerous other states, including at least six in the 2025 legislative session, all with the common goal to silence conservative groups.
In Arizona, pro-life groups found themselves without adequate resources to counter the onslaught of progressive funding for the Right to Abortion Initiative. The Associated Press reported that the state’s pro-life side was outspent roughly 35-to-1, among the most dramatic discrepancies in abortion-related ballot initiatives across the country.
This funding discrepancy is by design. Prop 211’s byzantine reporting mechanism has confused lawmakers, regulators, nonprofit leaders, and donors, with the ensuing confusion disproportionately harming the pro-life cause. Many conservatives chose to forego donating to groups behind the pro-life ballot measure out of fear that their names and home addresses could be exposed, resulting in threats, harassment, and other reprisals.
Sadly, these fears are not unfounded. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Catholic churches and pregnancy resource centers have been targets of vandalism and arson by radical progressive activists across the country. The left’s violence towards pro-lifers inevitably has a chilling effect on the entire ecosystem of pro-life organizations, to include those defending Arizona’s centuries old pro-life law.
None of this should come as a surprise. Arizona conservatives have spent the last three years warning of Prop 211’s chilling impacts, even challenging the law in both state and federal courts for putting their donors in danger.
Silencing Donors
Center for Arizona Policy, a state-based think tank that advocates for conservative policy reforms, challenged the law, arguing that the law subjects their donors to targeted harassment campaigns. The center’s former executive director Cathi Herrod has been the target of the left’s ire. She told the Arizona Capitol Times, “Harassment, often obscene, of me, as CAP’s public face, continues unabated on social media and through telephone calls to our office, with recent reference to me being ‘no better than the Taliban’ and a ‘zealous tyrant.’”
Scott Mussi, president of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club said of Prop 211, “Donors have informed me that they would limit, alter, or eliminate their contributions to FEC if their names, addresses, and employers are publicly disclosed.”
Similar Proposals in Many States
Yet progressives are already attempting to export Arizona’s nonprofit disclosure law to other states. In Maine, a state lawmaker introduced a bill that is almost a verbatim replica of Prop 211, with the support of the same activist groups who helped draft Prop 211 and are now defending the law in court. Similar bills have now emerged in Idaho and Minnesota, following failed attempts to bring the law to Oklahoma and Oregon in 2024.
While defunding Planned Parenthood is a significant victory in protecting unborn children, much of the fight will remain in the states. Therefore, conservatives should heed Arizona’s Prop 211 as a warning: doxxing nonprofit donors will only limit the right’s ability to mobilize in support of conservative causes. Legitimate concerns about exposure to radical leftist activists sidelines many conservatives from efforts to protect life, among other priorities. Instead of laws that target Americans for their beliefs, the pro-life movement needs privacy to ensure conservatives are free to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.
Brian Hawkins is the senior director of external affairs at People United for Privacy Foundation.
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