(LifeSiteNews) — X and Tesla owner and presidential adviser Elon Musk single-handedly funded a mysterious political action committee that promoted Donald Trump’s reelection to pro-abortion voters on the grounds that he would oppose a national abortion ban, a new filing with the U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) has revealed.
In the closing weeks of the 2024 presidential election, television ads began appearing from a group called RBG PAC, named after the late left-wing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and based around the proposition that she and Trump were two “great minds” who agreed that abortion policy should not be decided at the federal level. It used Ginsburg’s name without the permission of her family, who called it “appalling.”
Its ads featured women explaining that they were voting for Trump “on the economy and keeping us safe,” while expressing that they believed in the so-called “freedom to choose” and were satisfied that Trump did not stand in the way of that “freedom.”
The group was predicated on the fact that Ginsburg admitted in 1985 that Roe v. Wade, which forced all 50 states to allow nearly all abortions, was “[h]eavy-handed judicial intervention [that] was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” However, it neglects that Ginsburg went on to endorse Roe’s outcome for abortion-on-demand and simply wished it had been reached via a different case, advocated that Roe be upheld, and repeatedly condemned pro-life laws and voted to force states to allow partial-birth abortion.
On Thursday, NBC News highlighted an FEC filing from RBG PAC, which revealed that it was funded entirely by a single $20.5 million contribution from Musk, a free speech advocate who spent more than $250 million overall helping elect Trump, and is now helping the incoming administration by co-leading a non-governmental advisory group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will make recommendations for spending cuts.
Musk has yet to comment on the revelation, but during the campaign repeatedly emphasized that Trump opposed a national abortion ban.
Trump’s dramatic about-face from the clear pro-life stance of his 2016 and 2020 campaigns was one of the most controversial aspects of his campaign, and a source of great consternation for pro-lifers who supported him twice before.
While continuing to take credit for nominating three of the five Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, Trump aggressively came out against federally banning abortion to the point of promising to veto any such bill that reached his desk, forced a rewrite of the Republican Party platform to remove its longstanding commitment to eventually banning abortion nationwide, boasted about making the GOP less “radical” on the issue, criticized multiple state pro-life laws for being “too tough,” proclaimed himself the “father” of embryo-destructive in vitro fertilization, and pledged to continue allowing the illegal mail distribution of abortion pills – all while assuming (correctly, as it turned out) that most pro-life voters would decide he was still preferable to radically pro-abortion Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Musk, a tech mogul and former darling of left-wing elites for his work on electric vehicles, found himself increasingly at odds with the left over the past several years over its embrace of social media censorship (which he purchased Twitter and turned it into X to counteract) and what he calls the “woke mind virus,” eventually deciding that Trump’s victory in 2024 was necessary to defeat both.
On the subject of abortion, Musk appears to be ambivalent toward the practice and open to pro-life objections, but not fully onboard the cause to end it.
In October, he told a self-identified abortion survivor that “if a baby can survive outside the womb, [he or she] cannot be aborted … If [the baby] is far enough in gestation to survive outside the womb, at that point, it is not abortion, it is murder.” However, abortion is always murder, as it always involves the killing of an innocent child, whose life begins at the moment of conception.
Musk has also criticized secularism and believes societies need to have more children, views which could contribute to a further pro-life awakening in the future.
In the meantime, pro-lifers are approaching the incoming administration with a mix of hope and worry. One encouraging sign has been Musk making clear he intends for DOGE to propose eliminating Planned Parenthood’s federal funding.