Former Time’s Up Leaders Take Up Abortion Rights – But Face Criticism From Longtime Activists

Former leaders of Hollywood’s nonprofit Time’s Up — including producer Katie McGrath, attorney Nina Shaw, actress Ashley Judd and CAA agent and board member Maha Dakhil — have mobilized anew in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to abortion last month. But former Time’s Up members and survivors of sexual assault say the group’s past failures, including on the abortion issue, hinder their credibility.

“Once again, we see an elite group mobilizing around a social issue without including the activists who’ve been working on this issue for decades,” activist and sexual assault survivor Louise Godbold wrote in an email to TheWrap. “And no, it is not enough to accessorize the next Golden Globes with abortion activists dressed in black.”

Additionally, two former members of Time’s Up told TheWrap that the group’s leaders lacked credibility because prior to the overturning of Roe v. Wade last month, the group declined to take a stance on abortion rights to avoid being “too political,” as one of the former staffers said.

“There was reticence to engage on the issue of abortion,” the former staffer said, adding that the decision, discussed as early as 2019, prompted her to question the nonprofit’s core values. “The fight against sexual assault and the fight for abortion rights are fundamentally about the same thing, which is women being able to control their bodies and what happens to their bodies. All of it is political.”

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The other former staffer confirmed that the group declined to take a stand on abortion, which she said caused internal dissension.

A great number of former Time’s Up leaders, including current board member Judd, were among a few dozen women from various industries across media and entertainment who met virtually one day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. They met again this past Saturday, TheWrap learned. Judd, Shaw and Dakhil didn’t respond to TheWrap’s requests for comment. McGrath did not respond to a phone message requesting comment.

Ngoc Nguyen, a Time’s Up staffer who was also at the meetings, said she was working for Acora Partners, “the social impact firm organizing these meetings,” along with organizer Catherine St. Laurent, one of the founders of Acora Partners. Another meeting organizer said the group of women mobilizing around abortion rights is a “loose network of people across industries” seeking to be of service to the populations most affected by the ruling.

The Zoom meetings represent the first significant mobilization of these powerhouse women since Time’s Up essentially disbanded last November in the wake of a series of scandals that stemmed from the group’s leadership working with former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as he faced allegations of sexual misconduct (which eventually led to his resignation last August).

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The scandal led to the resignations of former Time’s Up chair Roberta Kaplan and CEO Tina Tchen, both respected Democratic Party advisers and longtime activists for women and underrepresented groups. Their departures led to most of the board resigning en masse in September 2021, and the downsizing of the entire 25-person staff. Since then, Time’s Up has been barely a blip on the activist radar.

But it seems that the seismic decision to end women’s federal rights to abortion lit a fire under Hollywood’s most powerful women, including former Glamour editor in chief Cindi Leive and Universal Music Publishing Group CEO Jody Gerson.

The first Zoom meeting at the end of June featured a speech by Gloria Steinem, a poem by Amanda Gorman and “detailed explanations from doctors and lawyers about the state of play post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization,” according to Puck, which first reported on the gathering. It concluded with a push for donations to the National Network of Abortion Funds and a call for weekly meetings.

Godbold, executive director of Echo, a nonprofit organization that provides training on trauma and resilience to survivors and service professionals, told TheWrap she’s “concerned that this particular group will make the same mistakes they did when creating Time’s Up.”

Godbold, who previously criticized Time’s Up for the dearth of assault survivors in its membership and for failing to provide financial support or trauma therapy to survivors, told TheWrap: “These powerful Hollywood women have learned nothing from the failings of Time’s Up.”

“Will this Hollywood group do anything to help the women who suffer economic and other challenges as the result of being denied an abortion?” Godbold wondered. “The survivors of sexual violence who did not feel well-served by Time’s Up are guessing not.”

One of the former Time’s Up staffers also echoed Godbold’s critiques that the organization didn’t fulfill its goal to empower women and survivors, but instead members too often focused on “networking with other powerful women.” She feared that once again, the high-profile former Time’s Up leaders are looking to “hop on the bandwagon” of abortion rights.

Many had questioned Time’s Up’s priorities for spending 45% more on staff salaries in 2019 than on its Legal Defense Fund. According to the group’s 2019 990 forms, Time’s Up took in nearly $11.5 million in contributions and other revenue in 2019, spent $4.5 million on salaries and other compensation — including $590,000 to Lisa Borders, who served less than two months that year as the nonprofit’s CEO — but handed out a total of only $3.1 million in grants to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund.

“As we saw with Time’s Up, they took up a lot of space, they raised a lot of money that could have gone to organizations that were actually fighting for survivors,” the former staffer said. “And my worry is that they’re going to take up a lot of space on abortion rights when when you know there are already many organizations who are doing the real work and and need our support right now.”

Sharon Waxman contributed to this report.

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