01 Jul 2022 Corporate Response to Dobbs Will Backfire on Woke CEOs
“In response [to the Dobbs decision]… a string of major American corporations have committed to paying the expenses of employees who find themselves unable to secure the abortion of their choice where they live,” writes Free Enterprise Project (FEP) Director Scott Shepard in his latest commentary for Real Clear Markets.
“The Dobbs decision has provided the most recent needless-risk creation opportunity” for CEOs, Scott adds.
The column explains the differences in abortion policy between states, and how by giving employees the option to travel to any state, corporations have adopted the policies of the most ardently pro-abortion states.
“By their hasty moves, woke corporations have in effect adopted these abortion-maximalist positions as their own,” Scott clarifies. “The companies’ positions are now dictated by the most extreme pro-abortion position to be found anywhere in the Republic.”
Scott also details how this extremist position is bound to backfire on woke CEOs.
“Whichever way the companies go,” he writes, “the CEOs who allowed themselves to fall into this trap will find themselves obliged to assert, as usual, that this additional link in a long chain of left-wing political activism is really no such thing…. This will leave the CEOs to retreat further to the claim that the move had nothing whatever to do with politics; rather, they acted because it was in the demonstrable long-term best financial interest of their companies. On its face, this will be an absurd claim.”
Scott concludes: “Everyone knows that Larry Fink, Brian Moynihan and the rest of the woke CEO brigade are liars: their actions are patently woke, patently partisan, patently political. Every few weeks, it seems, they add fresh evidence to the eventual fiduciary-breach cases against them.”
To read the full piece, click here.