On Friday, ridesharing companies Uber and Lyft announced opposition to the Texas Heartbeat Act, which took effect on September 1. In addition to virtue-signaling about covering drivers’ legal fees if they were ever sued, multibillion-dollar company Lyft made a massive donation to Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion business.
Days after the Texas Heartbeat Act (SB 8) went into effect, Lyft announced that the ridesharing company is anti-Life. Under Texas’s life-saving legislation, anyone who aids or abets the killing of a preborn child through abortion after there is a detectable heartbeat (around six weeks’ gestation) can face a civil lawsuit. Pro-abortion activists began fearmongering that drivers for ride-sharing companies like Lyft could face litigation if they drive a mother to an abortion.
In a statement, Lyft announced that the organization would not encourage drivers to follow the Pro-Life law in Texas. In the statement from Lyft’s cofounders and general counsel, the ridesharing company inaccurately stated, “A new Texas law, SB8, threatens to punish drivers for getting people where they need to go — specifically, women exercising their right to choose and to access the healthcare they need.” In response to the Heartbeat Act, Lyft created what executives are calling the Driver Legal Defense Fund. The purpose of the fund is “to cover 100% of legal fees for drivers sued under SB8 while driving on our platform.”
The public posturing on the part of anti-Life Lyft is wholly unnecessary. The law does not vilify drivers; the law protects the rights of innocent preborn children. Lyft and Uber pretend the Texas Heartbeat Act will create chaos, but in reality, the standard for aiding and abetting already existed in Texas law. Uber and Lyft drivers are no more likely to be held responsible for a customer’s actions than they would be for other legal matters under the “aiding and abetting” standard. The occasion for the statement seems to be not so much concern for the welfare of the rideshare company’s drivers as an opportunity to display how anti-Life the company is. The statement claimed “this law [SB 8] is incompatible with people’s basic rights to privacy, our community guidelines, the spirit of rideshare, and our values as a company.”
The fundamental error in the statement from Lyft is the notion that abortion is necessary to women’s health. Abortion is not health care. Texas Right to Life prioritized women’s health through initiatives like Healthy Texas Women. Pro-Life Texans support ensuring access to high quality health care services for low-income women and children. Planned Parenthood provides fewer and fewer of such services. What Planned Parenthood does offer is an increasing market share of abortions in the United States.
Evidently, publicly opposing Texas’s Pro-Life law was not enough to demonstrate the anti-Life “values” of Lyft. In addition to creating the Driver Legal Defense Fund, Lyft announced that the company would donate $1 million to Planned Parenthood. Far from an organization that helps women, Planned Parenthood is a business that ended the lives of 345,672 preborn babies in a single year.
Not to be outdone in anti-Life activism, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi piggybacked on Lyft’s radicalism with a statement of his own. On Twitter, Khosrowshahi wrote in response to a tweet from Lyft cofounder Logan Green, “Team @Uber is in too and will cover legal fees in the same way.” Khosrowshahi ended his message to Green saying, “Thanks for the push.” Khosowshahi’s expression of feigned gratitude demonstrates how anti-Life cancel culture works: radical anti-Life activists bully corporations and private citizens into proclaiming public support for abortion, but most people do not support such radicalism.
There have been other instances of anti-Life activism since SB 8 went into effect, and Uber and Lyft are not likely to be the last of the woke companies to attempt to thwart the Texas Heartbeat Act. On Thursday, online hosting service GoDaddy notified Texas Right to Life that the website ProLifeWhistleBlower.com would be deplatformed. The website, which provides a means for concerned citizens to submit tips about suspected violations of the Texas Heartbeat Act, was temporarily shut down as Texas Right to Life works to transfer assets to another provider.
Abortion activists might attack the Pro-Life movement all they want. They won’t change the fact that right now, approximately 100 babies are being saved per day because of Texas Right to Life’s incredible work!