The corporations backing anti-abortion candidates

 Brennan Center -

During my research for this piece, Ultra­vi­olet, an advocacy group that focuses on ending sexism, shared data about elec­tion spend­ing in Louisi­ana in 2019 that it gathered with the help of Sustain­able Invest­ments Insti­tute (Si2), a nonprofit focused on corpor­ate governance issues. By their count, publicly traded compan­ies contrib­uted more than $400,000 to anti-choice candid­ates — both Demo­crats and Repub­lic­ans — in Louisi­ana during the 2019 elec­tion. Louisi­ana elects its state govern­ment in off years. (The next elec­tion is in 2023.)

Other corpor­a­tions that contrib­uted to anti-abor­tion candid­ates in Louisi­ana in 2019 include retail­ers Amazon.com and Walmart; commu­nic­a­tions and tech­no­logy compan­ies CBS, CenturyLink, Comcast, Disney, Face­book, Honey­well, Microsoft, Sprint, and Veri­zon Commu­nic­a­tions; food compan­ies Archer Daniels Midland and Coca-Cola; health­care and insur­ance compan­ies AFLAC, Amgen, Anthem, Bris­tol-Myers Squibb, Centene, CIGNA, DaVita, Eli Lilly, Health­Care Part­ners, John­son & John­son, HCA Health­care, Humana, Pfizer, United­Health Group, and WellCare Health Plans; energy compan­ies Amer­ican Elec­tric Power, Chev­ron, Cono­co­Phil­lips, Hallibur­ton, Mara­thon Petro­leum, Occi­dental Petro­leum, and Phil­lips 66; trans­port­a­tion compan­ies Deere, General Motors, and South­w­est Airlines; banks Capital One Finan­cial and Citig­roup; and a casino company, Las Vegas Sands.  

Some may argue that these compan­ies did not know about these candid­ates’ stances on abor­tion. But that seems less likely with the 2019 elec­tion cycle in Louisi­ana, during which Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) signed a heart­beat bill into law banning abor­tion after six weeks of preg­nancy on May 30, 2019.