More than 180 CEOs across the United States signed a letter denouncing attacks on access to reproductive healthcare, including the recent wave of extreme abortion bans, as "bad for business."
CEOs such as Rebecca Minkoff, Diane von Furstenberg, Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Glossier's Emily Weiss, The Wing's Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan, Birchbox's Katia Beauchamp, and Refinery29's CEO, Philippe von Borries, signed the letter, which appeared as a full-page ad in the New York Times on Monday. In total, the CEOs who joined the missive employ more than 108,000 workers.
"When everyone is empowered to succeed, our companies, our communities and our economy are better for it," the letter reads. "Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health, independence and economic stability of our employees and customers. Simply put, it goes against our values and is bad for business."
The letter was spearheaded by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the Center for Reproductive Rights. The organizations also partnered to launch a website called Don't Ban Equality.
The campaign comes as anti-choice lawmakers across the nation continue to introduce and pass an unprecedented number of bills restricting access to abortion care or outright banning the procedure in most circumstances. At least 378 abortion restrictions were introduced between January 1 and May 20 of this year, 40% of which banned the procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute. These include the bans on abortion once a "fetal heartbeat," a misleading term that refers to what is really embryonic pulsing, is detected, which have been introduced in more than a dozen states. Five of those states — Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, and Louisiana — have signed these types of bills into law this year alone. Last month, Alabama banned abortion at any stage of gestation and Missouri banned abortions at eight weeks of pregnancy.