Better in their words…

An advocacy group suing the federal government in a bid to limit nationwide access to the abortion drug mifepristone has wrestled for a decade to conceal the influence its religious beliefs exert over its public policy pursuits. The doctor-focused organization, which calls itself the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), wants to ban abortion, affirmative care for transgender youth, and the parental rights of non-hetero couples

ACPeds has long described itself, publicly and in court, as a “secular, scientific medical association.” But hundreds of confidential records leaked last month raise serious doubts about the veracity of those claims. A cache of more than 10,000 files inadvertently exposed by the group’s website, as first reported by WIRED on Tuesday, shows that ACPeds’ board members have continuously struggled to contain their motives and have debated the “pros and cons” of openly declaring their religious foundation.

The American College of Pediatricians, which is not a school, is joined by three other conservative medical groups and four physicians in pursuing the ban on mifepristone. A US federal appeals court hearing the case in New Orleans will convene later this month to hear arguments on whether to reverse or uphold a district court ruling that imposed a nationwide stay of the Federal Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of mifepristone in April, effectively blocking access to the drug.

The US Supreme Court intervened to halt the order in mid-April after an emergency relief petition was filed by the FDA. The case is now back with the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is arguably the nation’s most conservative court.

ACPeds has not responded to WIRED’s multiple requests for comment.

“They don’t want to debate us because they can’t beat us on the facts and the science,” Jill Simons, the group’s executive director, said today to the Daily Signal, a political blog published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Simons said the group’s “key technology structures” had faced a “concerted attack” that she believed was the work of a “professional.”

A statement to members from Simons calling the incident a “hate crime” originally printed by the Daily Signal has been removed without explanation.

Board meeting minutes dated as far back as 2014 raise questions about the group’s candor in its public portrayals of its work and the means by which it arrives at seemingly medical-based recommendations. The group has claimed on its website not to “inquire about or use an individual’s religious or political identification as criteria for membership,” a statement aimed at assuaging concerns that its recommendations aren’t backed purely by medical science. Documents reviewed by WIRED, however, show that the group views “mainstream medicine, psychology, [and] academia” as top threats to its mission.

Unequivocally, ACPeds’ recruitment efforts are focused on individuals it believes are both religious and conservative, for all its protestations to the contrary. A 2017 document, for instance, revealed that the group had recently set a goal of contacting “Christian medical schools to recruit members.” The following year, it solicited fundraising advice from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group that has provided ACPeds with free legal services and is currently representing it in the fight over mifepristone. The advice it received was redundant: “TARGET CHRISTIAN MDs.”

ACPeds has also targeted donors, physicians, and other clinicians based solely on their political leanings, documents show. The group maintains a list of more than 5,000 “conservative doctors,” for instance, and records reveal that they have been routinely targeted with mailers designed to elicit interest in membership.

In 2021, ACPeds solicited a proposal from a direct-mail fundraising agency on how to boost its fundraising efforts and where to spend the windfall. The agency recommended that ACPeds target “30,000 prospective conservative donors,” whose gifts, it said, would in turn be spent to “target conservative professionals in the medical community.” In an explanation of the services it offers, the agency said it could procure donor lists from “other like-minded organizations,” and that, if ACPeds wished, it could facilitate “exchanges” and “rentals” of other mailing lists.

Information about medical professionals would not be sold or exchanged, the agency said, if the professionals are “existing ACPeds members.” A contract between the group and the agency was finalized in August 2021, records show.

Despite its homages to science, the views of ACPeds and its board are deeply rooted in a morality based exclusively in evangelical religious beliefs. Notes taken at board meetings, which open and close with prayer, show that its directors view consensus science, people who hold advanced degrees, and even the law itself as a threat to its agenda. Prayer is prescribed as “armor” against the group’s perceived adversaries, which include other Christians whose devotion they’ve judged to be inadequate.

Minutes from a 2017 board meeting read: “Threats to the College include the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and the LGBTQ lobbying body, as well as mainstream medicine, psychology, academia, media, corporate America and nominal Christians, churches and organizations.”

The atmosphere at ACPeds’ closed-door meetings, dozens of which are meticulously documented, contrasts sharply with the image it aims to project publicly. Conversations over exactly how religious the group can present itself publicly have rolled from one year to the next. During meetings in 2014 and 2015, members discussed the potential benefits of declaring their “recognition of God versus standing purely as a scientific organization.” A minute taker noted that no “definitive agreement” could be reached about “whether or not to do this.”

Records of its membership totals show that as few as half of ACPeds’ 700 members may be practicing pediatricians, with its numbers being boosted by subscriptions from students, retirees, and so-called “friends” of the organization. Records show the group has also explored expanding its ranks to include additional members without medical expertise in response to its lackluster returns on expensive recruitment efforts.

Debates over whether to harness its religiosity in a more public way have been attended by a Catholic attorney, who in 2014 advised them to “express belief in a deity without being evangelical.” After the opening prayer at the following year’s gathering, the group’s then president, Michelle Cretella, mimicked the lawyer’s advice, reminding members that ACPeds is not a “religious organization,” but a “theistic” one that recognizes “natural laws” imparted by a supreme being.

“Without God, there is no morality,” the lawyer said.

The group also sought advice on its continued efforts to promote conversion therapy, a practice widely condemned by major medical associations as both pointless and potentially harmful to subjects with a same-sex orientation. After conversion therapy was banned in several states, ACPeds began to fear a lawsuit. The lawyer’s advice boiled down to characterizing the treatment not as a form of medical care, which could be subject to regulation, but a conversation.

“The bans to sexual-orientation-change therapy in various states are clearly in opposition to the constitutional right of freedom of speech, and these bans are simply viewpoint discrimination,” he said. The US Supreme Court would later disagree on three occasions.

At another meeting, in 2017, Cretella applauded the group for being “increasingly viewed as an authority by the media and the courts.” She was troubled, however, by how few of its members were willing to write papers for the group or attach their names to those it authored. At the time, the group was pursuing a partnership with the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), a mostly Catholic-based organization formerly known as Morality in Media (MIM). MIM was among a group of conservative Christian organizations that led a boycott of Disney in the 1990s after the company agreed to extend health benefits to the partners and children of employees in same-sex relationships. (NCOSE is not to be confused with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, or NCMEC, a nonprofit founded by the US Congress that assists law enforcement in child exploitation cases.)

During a September 2017 board meeting, the group’s president boasted about a project to create “Prager-style” videos, an apparent reference to Dennis Prager, the far-right conservative figure who cites ancient Jewish law as an excuse to oppress gay people. The proposed titles for the ACPeds videos included “The Causes of Homosexuality” and “Ten Celebrities Who Have Gone Gay to Straight.”

The following year, a slideshow detailed two new sources of possible funding: The Christian Employers Alliance, whose mission, it says, is defending “Christian business owners,” and Legatus, which describes itself as an “executive peer-group” working to “spread the Catholic faith.”

The presentation suggests that the group’s rejection of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals is not always immutable–provided they prove useful in furthering the persecution of transgender people. The presentation includes a quote from a fellow physician and teacher at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, where students–reported to prefer the name Christian Hogwarts–are taught to perform faith-healing miracles (of the biblical variety).

“We find friends in unlikely places,” the quote reads. “Trans ideology has LGB enemies.”