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Research

From our nation’s health department to state legislatures to the anti-abortion lobby, Equity Forward conducts extensive research on opponents of sexual and reproductive health care. In addition to our research-driven campaigns, Equity Forward also provides fact sheets, reports and public records in order to hold our opponents accountable.

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Reports

Funding The Bans: A Look at the Major Corporations Financing the Lawmakers Behind State Abortion Bans

August 21, 2019 Reports

Executive Summary

In 2019, nine states passed severely restrictive anti-abortion laws, including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Missouri. 

In the wake of this wave of oppressive legislation, corporate leaders are using their platforms to fight back. In Georgia, top industry leaders said they are considering moving their operations elsewhere if the state begins to enforce its ban, and in early June, a coalition of nearly 200 businesses nationwide announced their opposition to the laws, deeming them “bad for business.” 

But when it comes to gender equality and health care access, many leading corporations are talking the talk, but not walking the walk. 

Fifteen big-name companies — AT&T, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Delta Air Lines, General Motors, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Lyft, Mastercard, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Uber and Walmart — boast their commitment to gender equality. But each of these companies contributed significant sums of money to support lawmakers (or the committees backing them) who sponsored oppressive anti-abortion legislation. 

This report demonstrates the monetary contributions of 66 corporations, including these fifteen companies, to lawmakers who are hostile to reproductive health care access. 

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The Heritage Foundation’s Health Department: How an Increasingly Radical Right Wing Think Tank Is Controlling HHS — to the Detriment of Reproductive Health and Other Human Rights

April 25, 2019 Reports

Executive Summary

The Heritage Foundation brands itself as a think tank of establishment conservatives; as policy experts in the fields of economics and national security who align with the traditional Republican Party. This branding is a façade, as Heritage regularly spouts hateful ideas that are detrimental to LGBTQ individuals, women, people of color and low-income workers. 

Scrutiny of The Heritage Foundation’s glossed-over extremism is needed now more than ever: while the think tank has enjoyed considerable respect in Washington, D.C. political circles and influenced conservative administrations for decades, its impact on the White House has grown under the Trump administration. Heritage has established a direct pipeline of Heritage alumni working within the administration; symbiotic policy has materialized, as well. 

Heritage’s influence on the executive branch in particular is epitomized by Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This report spotlights the extremist policy positions Heritage holds, its influence over HHS, and, importantly, how this influence is detrimental to Americans’ reproductive rights, human rights and access to health care. It looks at how closely HHS policy mirrors Heritage policy recommendations and the impact that influence has in the following areas: “conscience protection” and access to quality health care; birth control; LGBTQ discrimination; lifesaving research that uses fetal tissue; and the family separation crisis and abortion rights of migrant teens in government care.

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Human Life International: The Quiet Giant Underwriting Abortion Politics Abroad

January 30, 2019 Reports

Executive Summary

Human Life International (HLI), a U.S. nonprofit based in Front Royal, Virginia, has spent decades quietly funding anti-abortion campaigns in foreign countries. HLI funds affiliated groups in nations where abortion is totally illegal or only legal in rare cases to preserve the life and health of the woman. In many of these areas, women are being jailed with decades-long sentences and are suffering enormous consequences under these laws. 

While HLI's front-facing media doesn't talk about criminalizing women, the organization is spending millions of dollars and holding up its campaigns as examples for success when criminalization efforts succeed abroad. 

HLI is also closely related to C-FAM, a designated hate group, and represents an anti-abortion mission at the United Nations. Moreover, C-Fam has close ties to the Trump administration; Trump judicial advisor Leonard Leo was on C-FAM’s Board of Patrons as recently as July 2017, and former U.N. Secretary Nikki Haley asked C-FAM to represent the United States at an international event.

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