The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has made strides toward gender equality in the workplace in recent years, announcing a global study in 2019 that showed men and women at the company received the same pay for the same work. Two years later, the company hired a chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer.
As a business, Pfizer has created products that are essential for reproductive health. It markets contraceptives as well as Cytotec, a drug that assists patients in expelling an embryo or fetus from the uterus during an abortion or miscarriage.
Despite this profile, Pfizer is one of the most generous corporate supporters of lawmakers behind the political movement to criminalize abortion, an Insider investigation has found. It’s one of dozens of companies and associations in the healthcare sector that have given money to politicians behind so-called trigger laws that will ban abortion in 13 states if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Full coverage of Insider’s investigation into abortion-ban “trigger laws”:
An Insider analysis of campaign-finance data compiled by Followthemoney.org found that Pfizer gave about $281,000 to politicians in 13 states who drafted or signed such laws.
Overall, Insider found, close to 1,000 healthcare companies, insurers, clinics, care facilities, pharmacies, drug companies, and medical associations (or their associated political-action committees) have collectively given more than $10 million to the 380 state legislators and 13 governors responsible for enacting trigger laws since 2005.
Insider’s analysis looked at donations for the election cycle immediately prior to the passing of each law, as well as all subsequent cycles.
The findings are remarkable given that many of the sponsors employ, represent, or otherwise rely on doctors and nurses the people who would be held criminally responsible for performing abortions under the laws. Providers in some states would face felony charges and up to 10 years in prison.
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