In the past weeks, several US states signed anti-abortion laws. For example, Alabama passed a law that would not permit abortion even in case of rape or incest, while the law in Georgia prohibits abortions even as early as six weeks (with many women not yet knowing they are pregnant at this stage). The (overwhelmingly male) legislators treating The Handmaid’s Tale as an instruction manual is a terrifying phenomenon and many prominent people (including gymnasts) voiced their objections to these laws. However, one has decided it’s exactly the right time to gather some funds for an anti-abortion organization.
Sarah Finnegan, a 2012 Olympic alternate who competed for LSU for the past four years, has announced on Twitter that she is selling her Olympic and National team leotards to raise funds for a non-profit organization ABBA Helps to fight human trafficking.
🚨 ATTENTION 🚨
— Sarah Finnegan (@sfinnegan37) May 18, 2019
To all gym-fanatics,
I am selling my old National Team and Olympic leotards!!!
The profits are going to #SweepOffTrafficking through ABBA Helps ministries, a nonprofit organization.
Please retweet and stay tuned 🙂
It didn’t take long for the gymternet sleuths to discover that said organization’s main goal is fighting abortion and ABBA stands for “Aborted Babies Born Alive”. The organization is a registered non-profit and is run by Finnegan’s parents. One of the claims of the organization is that the fetal organs are harvested by Planned Parenthood for future sale.
The myth of Planned Parenthood harvesting and reselling organs of aborted fetuses for profit was started by several anti-abortion activists. Multiple state and federal investigations into those allegations proved that there was no black market for baby parts. Some of the fetal tissue is indeed given to research institutions and is extremely useful in research on a variety of illnesses but none of it is being sold and clinics receive no profits from this exchange.
ABBA Helps also runs camps for women after abortion “designed to bring healing and ABBA wholeness”, while Linnabelle Finnegan, Sarah’s mother, is a “holistic healer” with several degrees in Natural Medicine from a non-accredited for-profit university. She claims that belief is capable of changing the expression of your genes and curing cancer and she is working on a PhD dissertation on that very topic (seemingly, at the same non-accredited university).
When people on Twitter responded to Finnegan, pointing out the anti-abortion stance of ABBA Helps and her failure to disclose it when asking for donations, she went on a blocking spree and then also elaborated her plan for prevention of human trafficking. Apparently, it’s to make brooms that will say “Sweep off Trafficking” and have the National Human Trafficking Hotline number on it which will lead to traffickers not having “a place to hide when they see the broom displayed wherever they go”. If you didn’t quite understand from my explanation how exactly these brooms (that will likely be bought by similarly-minded Christians from the Bible Belt) will fight human trafficking (by hitting the traffickers with the broom?), this is because I don’t understand it either.
#SweepOffTrafficking pic.twitter.com/5Vv3H90fkW
— Sarah Finnegan (@sfinnegan37) May 19, 2019
UPD: The website ABBA’s Ranch that had all the anti-abortion propaganda and claimed that ABBA Helps is rescuing aborted children has now been deactivated. All the information about abortions was scrubbed from the main website ABBA Helps. Finnegan opened a new website specifically for the campaign. The website still does not have any specific information on how the organization plans to fight off trafficking besides scaring traffickers off with the brooms but is already accepting donations and selling the leotards.
When a sportists decide to talk about another thing beyond sports they tend to to this… garbage
It’s not your problem what Sarah decides to do. You take a one dimensional approach, have you thought that maybe pro-life is actually a good thing?!
They are NOT pro-life. They are pro-birth. There’s a difference. Fighting trafficking is being pro-life. Not cutting medicaid is being pro-life. Helping live human beings is pro-life. Not supporting child separation from immigrant parents is pro-life. Not working to actively dismantle the ACA is being pro-life. Get it?
Sarah can decide whatever she does, but asking money for something else under the disguise of “sexual trafficking charity” is a fraud.
I think this is important information to know. If Finnegan did do this, she should give back all the money to those who don’t support ABBA and their stance on abortion and what is happening around the US in several states now.
I know it’s difficult to get out from the fundie, ultra conservative haze when you’re raised in it, but that is what I did my four years off at university. I am compassionate towards the teens spouting what their parents tell them but grown women supporting anti-abortion ministries is inexcusable and disgusting. Shame her grace on the beam does not extend to showing grace to her fellow humans.
Why don’t you stick to writing about gymnastics and not delving into political topics, eh?
She is writing about a gymnast who just tried to con her fanbase, this is 100% her lane.
It’s her site she chooses to do. Don’t like it? Don’t read it.
Because it’s her blog and she can write whatever she wants. You have the choice to read it or not. See how freedom works?