The new abortion legislation taking hold in select states in recent months has caused an undertow among the backers of last November’s Blue Wave election, most demonstrably the gang of loudmouth Hollywood libs.
And, in an unforeseeable result, the swell of Democratic Party gains in D.C. has led to staunchly conservative legislation regarding abortions to be passed. Not only legislation but some loud and curious reactions in some sectors of the country.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio recently spoke on a panel as a response to a collection of business entities who have banded together to fight against this new surge in legislation. “Boycotts are one of the favorite tools of the left, including the corporate left,” said the Florida senator. “So yesterday, 170 CEOs signed a letter condemning some abortion laws that have been passed in a number of states. We’ve seen in the past, efforts against North Carolina led by the corporate community.”
He was responding to a new group, dubbed euphemistically as “Don’t Ban Equality”, which has the group of businesses joining together as signatores to oppose the new abortion laws. They took out a full page ad in the New York Times to express their opposition, essentially declaring that abortion is a key to their corporate goals. That is not hyperbolic interpretation, either. “Simply put, it goes against our values, and is bad for business,” states the ad.
Sen. Rubio had a very valid response to this dose of corporate concern. “It’s funny. These companies have no problem -- these same voices -- have no problem leading boycott efforts as a result of laws passed by the democratically-elected legislatures of American U.S. states. On the other hand, they are the first ones to come up here and argue ‘oh, we can’t cut off economic relations with fill-in-the-blank authoritarian country, China, Saudi Arabia, whoever it might be.'”
See the video of Rubio making his statement on this page.
Sen. Rubio is noting an identical reality concerning these laws and the entertainment industry -- specific to the Georgia Heartbeat Law. When it was being brought up in the Georgia Legislature, a collection of Hollywood celebrities put out a similar letter, pledging they would not work in the state if the bill passed. In the past decade Georgia has become a hotbed destination for Hollywood productions, and these celebrities threatened to boycott the state over the bill. Unswayed, the politicians passed the bill, and it was signed into law.
In the wake of this, a number of studios have expressed their concerns. Netflix, Disney, and a host of others have uttered what seem to be stern language, but have actually hedged their bets. They have uniformly stated they will wait to see if the law is actually upheld in the courts, and then will reassess their position. This is a tepid threat, as the bill will not even take effect until January 2020, and then the period of time for the challenges to work through the courts will take even more time. Meanwhile, the “angry” studios will continue to enjoy the tax breaks and labor benefits of working in Georgia.
These studios exhibit the same double-standard that Marco Rubio alludes to. Netflix seems perfectly fine shooting programs in Jordan, which has vastly more restrictive abortion laws, and in Egypt where abortion is banned outright. Disney is working to open a theme park in Saudi Arabia where women are subjugated in its society, and most studios are stampeding to enter into a film market that has been opened for the first time in 40 years. And there is not a studio unwilling to roll over for the communist authority in China, to gain entry into its deeply lucrative economy, despite the rampant human rights abuses taking place.
Yet, these players are livid with Georgia -- a state where they do not live -- where a democratically elected legislature passed a law on behalf of the electorate. Many critics declare this is a law passed by officious men, forcing women into servitude. To say this, they need to ignore the bill was co-written by two women. The similar legislation in Alabama was not only written by women politicians but signed by its female governor. Louisiana has a bill written by a female POC politician and about to be signed by a Democrat governor.
Marco Rubio echoed this reality. “So these same companies who have no problem being the voice of moral authority when it comes to imposing boycotts as a result of laws passed by the democratically-elected legislatures of American states,” said the senator ... “they have no problem being the voice of open and free economic engagement with authoritarian countries that have real, documented, persistent human rights violations.”
That is the type of logic to be expected when dealing with companies declaring that abortion is better for their bottom line.
Brad Slager, a Fort Lauderdale freelance writer, wrote this story exclusively for Sunshine State News. He writes on politics and the industry and his stories appear in such publications as RedState and The Federalist.
