Sheryl Sandberg Donates $3 Million to ACLU for Abortion Causes
Sheryl Sandberg, who once sparred with the American Civil Liberties Union, is now one of its biggest benefactors, providing a $3 million grant to boost its political activities around access to abortion.
The gift from the former Meta Platforms Inc. chief operating officer, which will be announced Tuesday, is one of the biggest abortion-rights grants ever received by the 102-year-old nonprofit, according to its longtime executive director Anthony Romero. The money will give the ACLU's political arm a “running start” against state anti-abortion efforts spurred by the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, he said.
Abortion rights are rising to be one of the top concerns for Democratic voters in the midterm elections. The issue is driving Democratic hopes of holding onto Congress, but resonates through to the local level.
“The action in the next two years is all at the state and local level,” Romero said in an interview. “It's all about state supreme court judges, attorneys general. It's about district attorneys and prosecutors, because now they have 14 states where abortion is unavailable and criminal.”
Sandberg, 53, with a net worth estimated by Bloomberg at $2.1 billion, has three teenage daughters. She said she's eager to support the ACLU's work as it fights to protect abortion at the ballot box because for her it's “unfathomable” that her daughters will grow up with fewer rights than she had.
“This is going to take hard political money,” Sandberg said in a Zoom interview from California last week, which Romero joined. “I have long and deep respect for Anthony and the ACLU team.”
Sandberg got to know Romero when she was on the defending side of an ACLU lawsuit. The organization sued Facebook in 2018 over alleged
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