Recently, 180 CEOs and senior executives from major corporations signed an open letter which they published as a full-page ad in The New York Times. The headline: Don’t Ban Equality.

“Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health, independence and economic stability of our employees and customers,” the ad reads. “It impairs our ability to build diverse and inclusive workforce pipelines, recruit top talent across the states, and protect the well-being of all the people who keep our businesses thriving day in and day out.”

In other words: because women can’t have abortions in certain states, these corporations can’t hire and promote them? Unless women can have abortions, these multi-million dollar corporations can’t figure out how to protect the well being of their employees and customers?

These CEO’s argue that without abortion—we all suffer. But is it true? Let’s look at their letter from two angles. First examining whether or not women are at a disadvantage in the workplace without abortion and second, let’s look at the real economic impact of abortion.

Are Women Limited at Work Without the Right to Abortion?

I wonder why more women aren’t insulted at what this letter insinuates. Does pregnancy and motherhood make a woman a “risky” hire in a state where abortion isn’t available? Can these CEO’s not promote women unless they have the option to terminate life? Does so-called “top talent” never choose to have a child when faced with unplanned pregnancy?

It seems these arguments contradict a spirit of ensuring that women and men are equally valued, without discrimination, in the workplace. If access to abortion is a necessity for me to be treated equally within these corporations, equality has been redefined.

Our ability to bear children—or “fertility” as abortion rights activists prefer to call it—becomes the ground whereby we’re allegedly deemed equal. But, oddly, this is one arena where men and women can never be the same. God designed us that way; it’s how the human race continues.

If women are a disadvantaged gender without abortion rights, doesn’t that undermine the very heart of equality?

Threatening Economic Stability?

Their second main argument, that “restricting access to abortion threatens  . . . economic stability of our employees and customers,” is also misleading.

Ironically, it’s abortion that’s bad for the economy—costing us an estimated $9 trillion dollars in economic and social impact. For every $500 abortion that Planned Parenthood completes, the U.S. economy misses out on more than $6,500 in economic activity. That’s how much the baby’s parents would have spent because of the baby during the first year of the baby’s life alone! 

Not to mention the fact that these same corporate CEO’s who signed the letter will miss out on future customers:

• One million teens who could buy popular styles from H&M.
• One million college kids who won’t buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s to study with.
• More than a million potential music downloads from Atlantic Records and Warner Music Group, or
• One million people who won’t buy someone they love a bottle of raspberry-scented lotion from The Body Shop.

These corporations fight their own economic interests by supporting abortion (and financially supporting abortion providers like Planned Parenthood). Simply put, reducing market size is generally not an effective growth strategy for any business.

Of course, these corporations prefer not to look at this side of the economic impact, instead assuming that abortion is the economically favorable choice for a woman faced with the costs of raising and having a baby versus an inexpensive abortion.

But I wonder, what it would do to our economy if these corporations could see the financial impact of promoting life? What if, instead of pouring millions into reducing the population, those same funds went to support these female employees—providing for their medical bills, helping with childcare costs, or giving a stipend to help a new mom buy what she needs to take care of the baby? 

Care Net is proud that our affiliated pregnancy centers provide more than just compassionate support and counseling to women and couples facing unplanned pregnancies. They also offer resources and services (over $56 million worth last year alone), so choosing life doesn’t have to be an economic dilemma.

No matter how many ads they run in The New York Times, we can only pray these CEO’s will someday see the immeasurable value of life.