--- title: Biggest Ob-Gyn Group Donates to Anti-Abortion Politicians description: Nearly 40% of political donations from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) go to anti-abortion politicians. canonical: https://time.com/6276073/acog-ob-gyn-anti-abortion-politicians/ author: Haley Weiss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-05-01T18:34:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:14.947Z article:section: Health og:title: The Biggest Ob-Gyn Group Donates a Lot to Anti-Abortion Politicians og:description: Nearly 40% of ACOG's political donations go to anti-abortion candidates, new data find og:url: https://time.com/6276073/acog-ob-gyn-anti-abortion-politicians/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53e772e894b3ab1a/698a3c75011682b69f982fab/GettyImages-1424868032.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5566 og:image:height: 3131 og:image:alt: GettyImages-1424868032.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Biggest Ob-Gyn Group Donates a Lot to Anti-Abortion Politicians twitter:description: Nearly 40% of ACOG's political donations go to anti-abortion candidates, new data find twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53e772e894b3ab1a/698a3c75011682b69f982fab/GettyImages-1424868032.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Biggest Ob-Gyn Group Donates a Lot to Anti-Abortion Politicians > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=0630543b-ce36-4b10-968e-dd26e5e42eea&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: What Happens Next in the Fight Over Abortion Pills [Watch (HLS stream): What Happens Next in the Fight Over Abortion Pills](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/YWU1AZq9.m3u8) (3:17)  _Published 2023-04-14. On April 7, 2023, Texas Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk ordered the Food and Drug Administration to invalidate its 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, one of the components of a medication abortion, a ruling that would effectively remove the drug from the market. Hours later, a Federal Judge in Washington state ordered the FDA to not make any changes to mifepristone’s current availability. Since then, a Federal Appeals Court has ruled that it can stay on the market, but imposed sharp restrictions for accessing it._  by [Haley Weiss](https://time.com/author/haley-weiss/)  ## Haley Weiss May 1, 2023 6:34 PM UTC  Rawlstock—Getty Images  by [Haley Weiss](https://time.com/author/haley-weiss/)  ## Haley Weiss May 1, 2023 6:34 PM UTC A new analysis shows that the U.S.’s largest professional organization of ob-gyns has spent a considerable amount of money in the last decade helping anti-abortion legislators get elected to Congress. From 2012 to 2022, of the 294 federal legislators who received campaign donations via the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ (ACOG) political action committee, 39.5% have actively worked to constrain abortion access in the country. Of those donation recipients, 70 explicitly opposed _Roe v. Wade_. These data, published Apr. 28 as a research letter in [_JAMA Network Open_](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2804263?resultClick=3), are surprising in the context of ACOG’s stated support of abortion rights and access, says lead author Dr. Benjamin Brown, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Brown University’s medical school. ACOG’s website [says](https://www.acog.org/advocacy/abortion-is-essential) that abortion “is essential for people’s health, safety, and well-being.” “ACOG consistently states that abortion is essential health care in its clinical guidance and public statements,” Brown says, but “the fact that ACOG has spent over $1.25 million on anti-abortion legislators in the last decade suggests that ACOG’s political donations may be undermining its stated commitment to abortion access and patient autonomy.” --- ### More from TIME --- **Read More:** [_Where 2024 Republican Hopefuls Stand on Federal Abortion Restrictions_](https://time.com/6263960/abortion-ban-2024-republicans-campaign/) [](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/republican-party-pro-life-abortion.jpg) In an email to TIME, ACOG said that “there is indeed a tension to balancing the many policy priorities of a membership organization that is dedicated to the many facets of medical care. To help balance the various priorities of ACOG, Ob-GynPAC”—the group’s political action committee—“considers many factors when evaluating candidates such as voting history on ACOG priority issues, including maternal mortality, reproductive health care, sustainability of practice, and access to care.” The $1.25 million sum accounts for nearly 38% of ACOG’s total donations in the decade leading up to the [overturning of _Roe v. Wade_](https://time.com/6189476/abortion-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade/), Brown found. That this share is so large may reflect some of the ways in which the sharp political disagreements surrounding abortion access presumably cause division even within the ranks of the industry’s leading medical group. Much of ACOG’s non-financial advocacy work, such as briefs filed in various abortion-related court cases, do align with the group’s stated policy priorities, which [include](https://www.acog.org/advocacy/policy-priorities#:~:text=Opposing%20Political%20Interference&text=Politicians%20must%20never%20interfere%20in,professional%20judgement%20and%20medical%20training.) that “politicians must never interfere in the patient-physician relationship or impose unjustified restrictions on medical practices.” In legal challenges against abortion, ACOG has long played a “critical role,” says Brown, and “it’s because ACOG has this critical role that it’s also essential that ACOG’s political donations work in concert with its other advocacy.” “Ob-GynPAC’s funding formula is not fully transparent,” says Brown, which makes it hard to track why the money was funneled to specific politicians. But stances beyond abortion—like those that affect maternal health, patient coverage, and all other women’s health issues—are also important to ACOG’s members, and may play large roles in their funding decisions, he says. However, with abortion access especially imperiled, Brown says, “supporting anti-abortion access legislators has real potential to harm patients” and is nearly impossible to do without contradicting ACOG’s key goals. In order to best serve patients and prioritize their needs, Brown would like to see ACOG and other organizations begin to make their funding formulas public. “I hope that these data spark a renewed conversation about how ACOG apportions its resources,” he says. ## Transcript A ruling by a Texas judge has left the legal experts and medical professionals alike. Scrambling to understand what it means when the FDA approves a drug. And who, if anyone can question that decision, I just can't believe that the there is a person in Texas who thinks that they know more than the FDA in terms of what is a safe medication and to try and remove a medication that we've been using for abortions, miscarriage management and other things In Obstetrics and gynaecology for more than 20 years is Completely absurd much like the daps decision last summer. This news will and has already overwhelmed, confused and height and fear. Within the communities, we serve the judge ruled. That me. Also known as the abortion pill which was approved more than 20 years ago to induce abortion. In the first trimester should no longer be approved. The Department of Justice and the drugs maker have appealed the decision and an appeals court. Granted the appeal that means that for now, the drug remains on the market and doctors can prescribe it and patients can use it, but the legal status of the drug remains uncertain, The judge's ruling is the first time that the powers of the FDA to approve. Drugs has been questioned by the courts and that's a big deal. Congress. Gave the FDA powers to review Drug Assessment for safety and Effectiveness and make decisions about that based on scientific evidence and to have a judge questioned that decision and not process, could seriously undermine the fda's authority. And that's what health officials are most concerned about. I spoke to the commissioner of the FDA who approved me for Christmas. And that's what she's most worried about. Is the precedent that this could set for questioning the fda's decision or not. Just me for christone, but other drugs as well. And she said, she knew that. When this drug came up for approval, that it was very important for women's reproductive Health, she instructed her staff to give the drug the same rigorous scientific review process that Used for every other drug that it approved and that's despite the fact that as an abortion pill. And at the time, the very first abortion pill, there were political pressures. However she said even then Roe v Wade, had already been declared law and therefore it was lawful to have an abortion and the climate was not as contentious as it was today. We're Roe. V Wade has been overturned by the Supreme Court and some states ban abortion while other states continue to allow it. The situation means that even experts don't know what happens next and everyone's looking to this case, to better, understand how much it will undermine the fda's authority and how much the FDA can rely on the powers that Congress gave it to maintain that when it makes decisions about drugs, like the abortion pill, that those decisions should stand. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6276073/acog-ob-gyn-anti-abortion-politicians/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6276073/acog-ob-gyn-anti-abortion-politicians/"},"headline":"The Biggest Ob-Gyn Group Donates a Lot to Anti-Abortion Politicians","datePublished":"2023-05-01T18:34:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:51:14.947Z","description":"Nearly 40% of ACOG's political donations go to anti-abortion candidates, new data find.","url":"https://time.com/6276073/acog-ob-gyn-anti-abortion-politicians/","keywords":["abortion","healthscienceclimate"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53e772e894b3ab1a/698a3c75011682b69f982fab/GettyImages-1424868032.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Haley Weiss","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/haley-weiss/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt53e772e894b3ab1a/698a3c75011682b69f982fab/GettyImages-1424868032.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"GettyImages-1424868032.jpg","caption":"close-up of a doctor's gown with stethoscope","creditText":"Rawlstock—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/abortion/","name":"abortion"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6276073/acog-ob-gyn-anti-abortion-politicians/","name":"The Biggest Ob-Gyn Group Donates a Lot to Anti-Abortion Politicians"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"What Happens Next in the Fight Over Abortion Pills","description":"On April 7, 2023, Texas Judge Matthew J. 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