In the latest instance of left-wing corporate malfeasance, ride-sharing companies Lyft and Uber promised to pay all legal fees if their employees are sued for driving someone to have an illegal abortion.
The Texas law that went into effect this week prohibits abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, usually about six weeks into pregnancy. Unique from other heartbeat laws, SB8 includes a private enforcement mechanism that allows people to file suit against abortionists and pro-abortion groups that violate the law by actively helping women get abortions.
CEO Logan Green took to Twitter Friday afternoon to boast of creating a “Driver Legal Defense Fund”:
TX SB8 threatens to punish drivers for getting people where they need to go— especially women exercising their right to choose. @Lyft has created a Driver Legal Defense Fund to cover 100% of legal fees for drivers sued under SB8 while driving on our platform.
— Logan Green (@logangreen) September 3, 2021
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi immediately joined the virtue signal:
Right on @logangreen – drivers shouldn’t be put at risk for getting people where they want to go. Team @Uber is in too and will cover legal fees in the same way. Thanks for the push. https://t.co/85LhOUctSc
— dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) September 3, 2021
Lyft also promised to donate $1 million to the billion-dollar abortion corporation Planned Parenthood.
In reality, the likelihood of an Uber or Lyft driver being sued under the Lone Star State’s new law is minuscule.
“Abortion activists have been fearmongering about the private enforcement mechanism, claiming that anyone who helps with an abortion — even in a very remote way, such as giving a woman a ride to the abortion facility — is at risk of being sued,” Life News explained Friday.
Related: Stars for Life: Texas Women Lead the Pro-Life Movement
Texas is the first state to be allowed to enforce a heartbeat law. Last year, about 54,000 unborn babies were aborted in the state, with 85 percent occurring after six weeks of pregnancy.
While progressive scholars are again bemoaning the end of Roe, whether the Texas law will be upheld as fully constitutional remains uncertain. It also has no direct bearing on the question of whether the Supreme Court will specifically on Roe v. Wade during next term’s major abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
However, the socially neutral Wall Street Journal believes the law is a potential political liability for Republicans and will not survive scrutiny, claiming in part, “Texas Republicans have handed Democrats a political grenade to hurt the anti-abortion cause. Pro-life groups have spent nearly 50 years arguing that abortion is a political question to be settled in the states by public debate. Yet now in Texas they want to use the courts via civil litigation to limit abortion.”
Meanwhile, it’s President Joe Biden who is being inconsistent and disingenuous on the issue:
Biden 2008 “I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception.”https://t.co/7FziE0jk5K https://t.co/IcdUJKIyrq
— Marc Thiessen (@marcthiessen) September 3, 2021