By Peyton Majors
Christian Action League
September 2, 2022
A coalition of pro-family leaders is slamming Walmart’s decision to expand abortion coverage for its employees, saying it amounts to “abortion on demand” and could impact the company’s bottom line if conservative customers flee.
Under the new policy, Walmart will provide abortion coverage “when there is a health risk to the mother, rape or incest, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage or lack of fetal viability.” Just as significant, the company says it will offer “travel support” for employees if such abortions are not legal or available within 100 miles of their location.
A coalition of more than a dozen pro-family leaders and former political leaders signed an Aug. 24 letter to Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon, arguing that “millions of American consumers” do not realize that “by patronizing Walmart, they are funding woke policies they morally oppose.”
The letter was led by Concerned Women For America’s Penny Nance and CPAC’s William L. Walton.
“Walmart is effectively providing funding to their 1.6 million employees and their dependents to cover abortion on demand, including expenditures for the abortion procedure and travel costs when not available within 100 miles,” the letter to McMillon says. “The bottom line is that Walmart-supported abortions are sure to increase in the coming years — more babies laid at the altar of ‘choice’ because of your financial contributions. It also does not escape our attention that supporting such a heinous policy conveniently keeps women at their Walmart jobs rather than at home caring for themselves and their babies.”
Walmart’s decision to cover abortions that pose a “health risk to the mother” is significant, the letter says.
“This lawyer-engineered language specifying health in this context means abortion on demand and they know it,” the letter says. “‘Health risks’ unrelated to the baby being carried to term covers mental stress, missing work, or any other reason whatsoever.”
In past years, the letter says, the policy covered abortion only “when the health of the mother would be in danger if the fetus were carried to term, the fetus could not survive the birthing process, or death would be imminent after birth.”
Walmart is abandoning its conservative customers, the letter says.
“In the past, Walmart has relied on conservative organizations and office holders to further policies that benefited Walmart, its shareholders, and its customers,” the letter says. “And when anti-capitalist politicians and activists attacked the company for its success and profitability, we stepped up to defend Walmart. We stood by the company because it was generally pro-family and because we embrace free enterprise and believe in the benefits of capitalism. We can no longer tolerate your leftist policy agenda — particularly when it facilitates the harming of innocent human life.”
The company’s new policy, the letter warns, could impact its profits.
“Conservatives who seek a government that reflects their values should take their business elsewhere,” the letter says. “And no self-proclaimed conservative official or conservative organization should accept funding from Walmart while it supports the policies of the woke left.”
Also signing the letter were former U.S. Sen. Jim Demint of South Carolina and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.
Meanwhile, theologian and seminary president Albert Mohler also is criticizing Walmart’s new policy, saying it’s a loophole to fund all abortions by employees.
“When you have a policy that says that abortion is justified or allowable when there is a health risk to the mother, just understand, that was broadened virtually immediately after the Roe v. Wade decision went out to mean not only physical health, but mental health,” Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said on his podcast The Briefing. “And that became a psychotherapeutic wide-open door for basically any woman at any time to say that she would be suffering psychological or psychiatric distress if she were not allowed to terminate the life within her. … The implication [of the Walmart policy] is you’re thinking of physical health, but the actual truth is that this becomes a wide-open door to legal abortion, basically upon demand.”
Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League, said, “Walmart has always been the kind of store that identified with the working class in this country. In fact, Sam Walton was the kind of man who came from such stock – people who, generally speaking, embrace traditional values. Apparently, that’s not the kind of people running the store anymore. Instead, Walmart’s been hijacked by the looney left. And yes, I said looney because to aid and abet the destruction of an innocent unborn child is morally insane.”
