In the aftermath of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, as well as the June 24 ruling itself, many companies outlined plans to subsidize travel by pregnant employees living in states with strong pro-life laws to obtain an abortion in states that don’t restrict it.
Few companies created benefits that covered abortion specifically or exclusively, though the timing of their announcements make their intentions quite clear. The day the decision was handed down, AT&T told employees that it would reimburse travel expenses for medical procedures that were unavailable within 100 miles, doing so without mentioning abortion. Its competitor, T-Mobile, created a similar policy at the beginning of May when the decision was leaked.
There is an interesting duality in the actions of these companies and others, one that progressives have already latched onto. At the same time that they are paying for their female employees to cross state lines for the purpose of obtaining abortions, they are also donating money to Republican political organizations.
The reason for this is most likely that companies have different needs in different regions of the country. AT&T’s national arms donate primarily to Democrats, according to Open Secrets, while many of its regional affiliates donate primarily to Republicans. AT&T Southeast, for example, operates in deeper-red regions, so it makes sense that this particular wing would donate more to the GOP.
Progressives who are up in arms about the Dobbs decision did not look at the situation with this sort of nuance. On Monday, Judd Legum compiled on his Substack a list of companies that pledged to fund abortion travel while simultaneously giving money to the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). He focused on donations to RAGA in particular because attorneys general are the ones who give the orders to enforce trigger laws that can legally go into effect in the absence of Roe v. Wade.
Legum called the practices “hypocrisy” and reported that AT&T and T-Mobile gave $125,000 and $100,000, respectively, to RAGA in 2021. Also on the list were Comcast, which gave $216,000, as well as Uber, Mastercard, and JPMorgan, all of whom donated $25,000.
Legum is not the only prominent leftist who is attempting to browbeat corporations into cutting off donations to Republicans. Two days before the court released the Dobbs decision, Jane Sumner, a professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, who has written a book on how consumers can influence companies’ political behaviors, published a column in the Washington Post detailing how activists can pressure AT&T into altering its donation practices.
Another piece in Bloomberg, published Thursday, focused on AT&T and other companies such as Amazon and Disney that have pledged to fund abortion travel while giving to Republicans. Left-wingers are not shy in their participation in public-pressure campaigns against political opponents, and these companies will likely face their wrath.
Secular progressivism is a demanding religion whose adherents believe in its tenets staunchly. And they can see past these corporations’ public-relations attempts. AT&T and the rest, by their own doing, are in a precarious position. They have alienated a number of pro-life customers while failing to placate abortion proponents. We will see what this situation holds for their business prospects.