Abortion is not a ‘business’

OPINION:

Abortion is a lot of things to a lot of people, but one thing it ain’t — one thing it should never be — is a “business.”

So when 180 or so leading company executives get together and sign a letter for a well-placed advertisement in The New York Times to say that their chief reason for opposing America’s emerging abortion protections for the unborn is that these laws are “bad for business” — well then, that’s a tad tinny-eared.

Sort of in the vein of saying border laws were bad for Pablo Escobar’s business.

It’s horrific logic.

“Equality in the workplace is one of the most important business issues of our time,” part of the letter read. “When everyone is empowered to succeed, our companies, our communities and our economy are better for it.”

Another graph: “Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health, independence and economic stability of our employees and customers. Simply put, it goes against our values, and is bad for business.”

The ad campaign was created by a coalition called Don’t Ban Equality, aimed at drumming up angst with new heartbeat bills that passed into law — basically banning abortions after the six- to eight-weeks’ mark of pregnancies — in Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky and other states. Alabama, meanwhile, has gone even further with its legislative crackdowns on abortions, effectively setting the stage for high court challenge.

Hollywood is in an uproar; movie-makers like Disney have pledged to stop doing business in states that enact new abortion restrictions. And now the business world, pressed by the likes of the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, is backlashing.

Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Ben and Jerry of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, fashion designer Kenneth Cole — these are but a few who’ve signed the letter.

But their cause is curious; their compass, skewed.

Didn’t America just peel back the layers of Planned Parenthood to find grisly details of baby body parts’ sales for profit?

Didn’t the country just watch the stomach-churning story of former physician Kermit Gosnell, convicted of murdering three infants who survived their abortions, as it played in court and then on the big movie screen — in all its leave-your-humanity-at-the-door, sociopathic style?

Calling attention to the “business” side of abortion just doesn’t seem smart politicking these days. Or smart CEO-ing.

Certainly, these company execs aren’t so far gone down the path of making money they forget that some of their customers aren’t godless souls, so swept in the me-first movement of doing what feels right over what’s morally right, that they can’t strike a more sensitive balance with their personal support of abortion.

It’s one thing to stand tall for a personal, political or cultural belief.

It’s quite another to take an issue so tied to emotion and morals and tough choices and painstaking grief-filled decisions and questions about God and life and death and rights versus wrong — and call it a “business.”

Shame on these CEOs.

Their ridiculous likening of a matter so delicate as abortion to a fight for money and profit is a ghastly misrepresentation of free market, free speech and frankly, of what matters to most Americans. They don’t have the pulse of America on this.

It’s questionable, at this point, if they even have a human pulse at all.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.