A Major Church Just Advocated For Abortion At A Shareholder Meeting

Part of my job as a corporate engagement strategist is to read what’s on corporate ballots at American public companies. Reading these agendas reveals a stunning amount of blatantly anti-business proposals from corporate activist groups, from pushing Lockheed Martin to divest from Israel to pressuring Starbucks to make oat milk free to fight racism (yes, that’s real). But the other day, I came across perhaps one of the worst examples of corporate activism that’s not only anti-business, but arguably directly at odds with values of the organization pushing the proposal. The proposal? Supporting employee access to abortion. The proponent? The largest Presbyterian denomination in America.

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (PCUSA) is one of the biggest Presbyterian denominations in America, with more than a million members in its ranks despite losing almost 50,000 members in 2024 alone. Earlier this year, the denomination shuttered its missionary program after almost two centuries, citing declining giving and church membership. But, while the international mission field may be a lost cause for PCUSA, financial struggles haven’t stopped them from pursuing other goals like making sure American employees can kill their unborn children. The PCUSA recently sponsored a shareholder proposal for supermarket chain Albertsons, urging the company to report on the effects of state-level restrictions on abortion in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade. Even though the proposal came from an organization representing thousands of Christians, it’s a masterclass in pro-abortion virtue signaling. “[Employees] who cannot access abortion when needed are three times more likely to leave the workforce, and four times as likely to slip into poverty.” Conveniently, the stats on unborn children go unmentioned.

PCUSA’s demands are clear: “support abortion, or you’re not acting in the best interests of your shareholders or employees. By the way, we’re a church.” PCUSA’s slide into backwards orthodoxy, rejecting virtually every tenet of the historic Christian faith, is well-documented. But from a business perspective, there is an important question to ask: Is supporting abortion access a fiduciary responsibility of publicly traded companies? In my view, no. And there are at least two reasons.

First, opining on divisive issues from abortion to ‘gender-affirming care’ is rapidly becoming the reddest of flags to both American consumers and businesses seeking to maintain their bottom line. All one needs to do is look at Target, Bud Light, & Disney to see how politicized business becomes bad business.

Second (and it’s a wonder we don’t talk about this more), companies that support abortion are literally supporting the killing of future customers. As my firm Bowyer Research wrote in a recent SEC filing, urging shareholders to vote against the PCUSA’s proposal, “For a company like Albertsons, whose long-term success depends on serving growing families and communities, policies that suppress birth rates may ultimately shrink its future customer base.”

That takes us to another common pro-abortion talking point in corporate America: that businesses operating in pro-life states are going to see worker shortages. That’s by no means a definitive statement. Albertsons is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Through a pro-abortion lens, companies in red states should be deeply concerned about the exodus of workers leaving for pro-abortion states. The reality? Idaho’s one of the fastest-growing states in America, with many of those new residents coming from pro-abortion states such as California, Oregon, and Washington. It’s almost as if population growth is more complicated than merely looking at a state’s abortion stance — if anything, pro-life Idaho seems to be winning the population growth war. It’s another reason that it simply makes no sense for a company like Albertsons to support abortion to appease corporate activists — especially when those activists come from the church.

This isn’t Christian corporate engagement, no matter what the Denethor-esque stewards of the PCUSA may tell you. But it is instructive as to how Christian organizations drift Left. While the PCUSA may be an infamously liberal denomination, that doesn’t mean that abortion advocacy is what many of its tithing church members, many of whom are conservative, and pensioned clergy want. You may be the most conservative PCUSA churchgoer alive but they can still use your tithes to lobby for abortion.

This should be a wakeup call for all Christians on just how bad things are getting in mainline denominations. If you’re part of a church or Christian ministry, it’s time to get answers about who’s stewarding your finances and what they’re doing — how are “you” voting on these sorts of proposals? Christian organizations have fallen asleep at the wheel when it comes to their finances reflecting their faith.

What can be done to remedy this particular situation? A good place to start is making sure that your church is never in the arena advocating for the killing of unborn children. And right now, the PCUSA’s doing just that.

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Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism, as well as a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. His work has been featured at outlets including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Opinion, C-SPAN, and The Daily Wire. He is a member of the Young Voices contributor program and can be found on X @IsaacWillour.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.