Commentary
The Supreme Court’s long-awaited overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in June, ending a sloppily formulated constitutional right to abortion on demand that lasted nearly a half-century despite abortion not being mentioned in the document, returns the contentious issue to Americans’ elected representatives in the states and Congress, and we can expect lawmakers to engage in plenty of ugly debates on the subject.
Less foreseen, however, is the eagerness of many businesses to side with Roe supporters, to the extent of even financing female employees’ travel to procure an abortion should they reside in a state where it has become illegal.
What first emerges from the Pandora’s box this opens is the legal problem of human resources personnel who happen to be pro-life being required to make the arrangements for a fellow employee of the company to, as they see it, take the life of her unborn child. Beyond that, however, is the startling audacity of many dozens of firms taking it for granted that precious few of their customers will be resentful enough to take part in any consequential boycott activities against companies that go the extra mile in funding abortions.
There is no mystery to why this is happening; these firms have concluded that the way the social landscape was swiftly remodeled in regard to homosexuality was a practice run for the aftermath of the end of Roe. As one activist put it, businesses accommodating the same-sex agenda started “turning to coalitions to ensure they have strength in numbers, resources, and messaging alignment.” The code word “coalition” refers to “the ‘connective tissue’ for businesses across the dynamic landscape of LGBTQ rights in the U.S. … making the economic case for LGBTQ inclusion.” In other words, companies fearfully following the orders of activists.
But there have never been annual marches of tens of thousands of youths on Washington in opposition to marriage between two men or two women. The objections to abortion concern taking life, not living life. Are these woke businesses assuming that the pro-life movement is decommissioning itself, its war won now that Roe is dead?
The Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute found that the companies who have now sprung into activism to embrace abortion in the post-Roe environment are accommodating “their strategic constituencies—their industry, their workforce, and their geographic positioning.”
Tech firms far and away led the pack, constituting nearly a third of the pro-Roe businesses, while “heavy industry and manufacturing were sparsely represented.” Tech employees are far younger than those in other sectors, and younger demographics favor companies exercising abortion activism. “Financial and professional service firms were the second- and third-largest cohorts,” according to the Yale survey, and “combined with tech, they represent nearly two-thirds of all first movers.” These firms believe they must be woke to hire “the tens of thousands of socially conscious Gen Y recruits they require to feed their pyramidic staffing and business models.”
They are also writing off fly-over country. The Yale analysts were amazed to find that a scant 9 of the 101 abortion-friendly companies that jumped into action after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe were based in red states with Republican governors and legislatures. Business giants based in Seattle or New York or Silicon Valley or Cambridge, Massachusetts, may have their computers tracking their Midwest customers’ buying habits in sophisticated, cross-sectioned detail, but their values are likely incomprehensible to them as they happily take their cash. Consumers have souls, not just appetites for material goods.
The millions of Americans willing to go through the trauma of transplanting themselves and family members from California, Michigan, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York to Florida and Texas to escape life under big government, with its high taxes, high crime, and radicalized indoctrination masquerading as public education, may in large part also be willing to keep their wallets in their pockets when it comes to sellers who make themselves Planned Parenthood’s best customers.
The left is furious over the pro-life movement winning this marathon triumph that it patiently began decades ago, indeed perhaps the broader conservative movement’s greatest victory ever. What they and their woke corporate allies apparently fail to understand, however, is that the forces opposed to abortion see Dobbs not as the finish line, but as the starting gate of a long, new struggle. Even the establishment media, decidedly unfriendly to the cause of life, have already been found to be more willing to relay the powerful arguments against abortion to their audiences. CBS News’s Gayle King, for instance, spurred Hillary Clinton to a near repeat of her 2016 “deplorables” gaffe when she asked how she responds to those who say, “we are protecting the rights of unborn children. They have rights, too. What do you say to that? That seems to be the core argument.” Hillary’s response was, “You know, I say that it is predominantly a belief that is rooted in religion, which I respect” before turning to the familiar argument that “the government is not going to make this decision”—as her fellow Democrats engineer more and more governmental control over citizens’ decisions all the time.
Pro-lifers are raising lots of money and it is a good bet that over the next several years—via TV ads and other channels—more Americans will see ultrasound images of babies within the womb than ever before. Minds and hearts will be moved—minds and hearts belonging to paying customers who may be willing to take their business elsewhere.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
