The LGBT movement has successfully used corporate America to bully states into repealing or blocking laws it doesn’t like. Now the pro-abortion movement is trying to use the same playbook to strong-arm the states into repealing pro-life laws.
Recall 2016, when North Carolina considered a law establishing that people had no right to use public bathrooms designated for the opposite sex. The organized backlash began immediately. Financial giant PayPal canceled plans for a small headquarters in Charlotte, the NCAA threatened to cancel future events in the state, and dozens of leftist states and cities banned their employees from traveling there with government funds. A simple proposal to protect the privacy of underage students and people in public places was used by the LGBT movement to tarnish the entire state as anti-LGBT and discriminatory. The law was watered down after a Democrat was elected governor by a 0.2 percent margin.
The same year, the Georgia legislature passed a Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The three-page bill mirrored a federal law by the same name signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and sought to make it harder for the government to infringe on any person’s First Amendment right to religious freedom. Again the LGBT movement sprung into action: supporters of the bill were tarnished as anti-gay bigots. Hollywood studios threatened to cancel projects in the state. The NFL threatened to pass over Georgia for future events. Other big corporations like Coca-Cola and Unilever voiced their opposition. Governor Nathan Deal, who had campaigned as an evangelical Christian, cowed and vetoed the bill.
There are many other examples, like in Arizona, Indiana, and Texas, where huge companies threatened to pull business in response to laws protecting religious freedom.
Now it’s the pro-abortion movement’s turn.
Georgia enacted a law to ban abortion in the state after the unborn baby’s heartbeat can be detected, which is usually around six weeks into pregnancy. This time, Georgia has a new governor: Brian Kemp, who won the primary and general election pledging to sign pro-life laws (and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, should it come to his desk). The pro-abortion movement is now rallying large corporations to boycott the state and strong-arm it into repealing the law by hurting its economy.
Georgia is a major partner of the Hollywood film industry thanks to its business-friendly climate and tax credits for filming movies and TV shows there. A list of mostly unknown celebrities signed on to a letter pledging to boycott Georgia until the law is repealed. Kemp was unintimidated and doubled down on recruiting the film industry to the state.
Then the corporate wheels of intimidation started turning. Within 48 hours of each other, multiple major studios said they would fight the law and threatened to cancel projects in Georgia. The first was Netflix, now a major producer as well as distributor of entertainment content, which said the “many women working on [its] productions in Georgia…will be threatened by this law” and that it would “rethink our entire investment” in Georgia over the law.
Next was Disney CEO Bob Iger, a large Democrat donor, who said it would not be “practical for us to continue to shoot there” if the law takes effect as scheduled on January 1st.
Then a whole slew of multibillion-dollar corporations joined in the dogpile: WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal, CBS, Showtime, AMC, Viacom, and Sony Pictures threatened to cease production in Georgia if the law takes effect.
The nature of this orchestrated attack on a duly enacted law is plain: the powerful pro-abortion lobby is using the power of giant corporations to intimidate Georgia into backing down.
Notice how there wasn’t an orchestrated corporate backlash — at least at this scale — in Ohio or Missouri, which also recently enacted heartbeat laws. That’s because those states don’t have a large number of powerful corporations who can hurt them economically.
But the pro-abortion movement has decided Georgia is their ripest target because it is host to so many big companies and stands to lose big money — and because it worked before with the religious freedom bill.
It becomes clearer every day that the marriage between conservatives and corporate America is over. Big Business despises mainstream America. It gets rich off the policies conservatives create and then turns around and threatens conservatives because it has decided more money can be made by supporting the Left.
The question is whether Georgia’s leadership will fold again in the face of illegitimate Saul Alinksy-esque tactics, or stand up to corporate bullying and refuse to be smeared and destroyed.
