Letter to Costco, Walmart, Kroger: Selling Abortion Pills is a Terrible Business Plan
You can monetize one death for $200, or you can sell $7,000 of baby, toddler, and children’s products for ten years.
We added our signature to a series of letters that were put together by Alliance Defending Freedom and sent to Costco, Walmart, Kroger, and several other retail companies that have been under pressure from abortion activists and the New York City Comptroller (but I repeat myself), cajoling the companies to sell the medically, politically, and legally dangerous abortion pill known as Mifepristone. Though your names are not used in these discussions, nevertheless, the fact that you are stockholders is the key that allows us to talk to these companies from a position of authority, that is your authority as owners. Thank you for your participation through us.
The letter makes some very powerful points, for example from the letter to Costco:
“The legality of dispensing and distributing the abortion drug is in flux. The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has temporarily allowed pharmacies to continue to dispense the drug. But the Court decided the case on procedural grounds and left unresolved whether the current system of dispensing and distributing the drug is legal. Costco would also likely be prohibited from dispensing the drug through mail. Last year, 20 attorneys general wrote letters advising pharmacies that receiving and dispensing the drug by mail is expressly prohibited by the Comstock Act and many state laws. Violating the Comstock Act alone carries a prison sentence of up to ten years. And the statute of limitations is five years, so the current political leadership at the U.S. Department of Justice cannot provide you cover if the administration changes parties. It also bears repeating that the drug cannot be dispensed at all in 14 states that have laws protecting unborn life and dispensing would be restricted in 4 other states that protect unborn life after 6 weeks of gestation. Louisiana also recently classified the drug as a controlled substance.”
In addition, ADF questions the New York Comptroller’s claim that the drug is as safe as Ibuprofen. One out of 25 women who use it end up in the emergency room. How many of you have gone to the emergency room for reactions to Ibuprofen?
We at Bowyer Research ran an analysis which we intend to share with the companies quite soon. Here’s a quote from a forthcoming article that I wrote for WORLD Opinions:
“Killing customers is a bad business strategy. Let’s do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. Thanks to Walter Billingsley, Chief Financial Officer of American Family Association, for providing the numbers. Mifepristone sells for roughly $200 dollars. That is, tragically, a one-time thing. Costco averages roughly 3,000 dollars per customer per year. The average household is 2.5 people. So, for a Costco member, the average per capita spending is roughly 1,200 dollars. Over ten years, that’s 12,000 dollars. So, the grim mathematics of abortifacients show that Costco can monetize one death for 200 dollars, or it can enjoy revenues of 12,000 dollars over a ten-year period. Of course, to be conservative, one would discount for the fact that a dollar revenue ten years from now is not as valuable as a dollar now. So applying a five percent discount rate, the revenues of a child’s first decade of life has a present value of over 7,000 dollars. In short, life is more financially valuable than death. How could it be otherwise? The data will vary somewhat from company to company, but the principle holds. A company can sell the stuff of death once or it can sell the stuff of life for many years - diapers, Pedialyte, baby aspirin, Vicks, bigger diapers, antibiotics for toddlers’ ear infections, shoes, vaccinations, Halloween outfits, candy, band aids, bigger shoes, whiffle balls and bats, still bigger shoes and on it goes. It doesn’t take a degree in finance to know that 7,000 dollars in revenues is better than 200 dollars in revenues, even if the chief financial officer of the City of New York fails to grasp it.”
Chris Woodward of American Family Radio has interviewed me about the issue.
Abortion pills are rapidly becoming the way abortion is done in America. I am pro-life in my convictions, and I think most of you are, too. But even if you are not pro-life, I assume that as shareholders, you are at least pro-shareholder. Abortifacients are anti-shareholder, because they are anti-customer.
This is all reminiscent of the bankruptcy of Toys “R” Us. The company had made a conscious decision to support the pro-abortion side in the controversy over the Susan G. Komen foundation’s grants to Planned Parenthood. Years later, the company went bankrupt. They reason they gave for their failing business: falling fertility rates. Not enough babies means not enough children to buy toys for. Tragic.
