A New Model in the Fight for Abortion Rights

[Novara]

A New Model in the Fight for Abortion Rights

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We need to make so much noise that reproductive rights become an issue for corporate America. When Wal-Mart, Angie’s List and a number of other companies raised objections to Indiana’s religious freedom law, Gov. Mike Pence and state legislators quickly amended the law to clarify that it does not condone discrimination against gay men and lesbians. A similar sequence of events occurred in Arkansas.

Public pressure and the threat of government action to raise the minimum wage no doubt prompted McDonald’s and Target in recent weeks to increase the pay of their lowest-paid workers. Yes, it’s not much, but it’s a start.

The GOP’s about-face on the religious freedom laws underscores what I have long believed: that many establishment Republicans care more about protecting their economic interests and public image than about same-sex marriage, abortion or other social issues. Once major corporations realized that they might be subject to boycotts in states that legalized discrimination against LGBT people, both conservative businesspeople and Republican legislators called for change. Public support for adding a few coins to the pittance that low-wage workers earn, along with fear that lawmakers or voters might force bigger wage hikes, clearly prompted some companies to bump up hourly pay.

Would the same happen if we made a bigger ruckus about access to reliable contraception and safe abortion? I don’t know, but we’ve largely let business off the hook on reproductive health in recent years. Meanwhile, last year the U.S. Supreme Court granted privately held companies like Hobby Lobby and Eden Foods the right as corporate “persons” to impose the religious beliefs of their owners on their employees. As a result, they now ban insurance coverage for IUDs and other safe and effective forms of contraception despite mandates in the Affordable Care Act. I suspect that many more CEOs are largely uninterested in the private health care decisions of their employees; they have largely remained silent while access to reproductive health care has constricted nationwide because there is no political or economic downside for doing so, even as their employees pay a steep economic, personal and financial toll for the GOP’s anti-choice agenda.

Read more: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_new_model_in_the_fight_for_abortion_rights_20150430