CEOs from leading tech companies such as Tumblr, Slack, Foursquare, and Reddit have sent a letter to House and Senate leaders, urging them to continue Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding.
The letter, which is being promoted on a Planned Parenthood website, is addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and is signed by 74 tech leaders.
“We urge Congress not to pursue any legislation that blocks women from accessing critical preventive care – including well-woman exams, birth control, and cancer screenings – at Planned Parenthood health centers,” the CEOs write.
“One in five women in America has relied on Planned Parenthood for health care at some point in her lifetime,” the leaders say. “And of course, men and members of the LGBTQ community rely on Planned Parenthood for quality health care too.”
The CEOs go on to say the work Planned Parenthood does “so closely resembles what we stand for as leaders in technology: creating opportunity for everyone to chart their own path in life and pursue their own ingenuity – without barriers or fear.”
Tumblr CEO David Karp and Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards kicked off the #TechStandsWithPP campaign that supports the abortion chain on March 10 at SXSW, the conference and festivals held in Austin, Texas annually that “celebrate the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries.”
“Corporate leaders need to recognize they are, in a way, political leaders,” Tinder CEO Sean Rad said during a panel at SXSW, NBC News reported. Last year Tinder also worked with LGBT activist group GLAAD to allow gender fluidity so that its users could identify as other genders in addition to male and female.
Planned Parenthood receives more than a half billion dollars in taxpayer funding annually and performs over 300,000 abortions per year.
Richards also recently tweeted that abortion is “vital” to Planned Parenthood’s mission, in response to a proposal from President Donald Trump that her business stop performing abortions in order to keep its taxpayer funding.
David Daleiden, producer of the undercover videos that alleged Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted babies for a profit, reacted to Richards’ tweet to Breitbart News, saying, “Abortion is equally ‘vital to our mission’ as birth control or cancer screening. So much for ‘only 3%,’” — referring to Planned Parenthood’s common claim that abortion is only three percent of its total activities.
The entire list of tech companies whose leaders signed the letter in support of Planned Parenthood is here.
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