PCUSA is Using Pastors' Pension Money for Pro-Abortion Activism. We’re Calling It Out.
Authentic shareholder engagement doesn’t look like divesting from the states which actually have growing employee and customer bases.
One of the biggest problems Bowyer Research exists to solve is one of value alignment: institutional finances being used to support things that don’t align with that institution’s values. We’ve talked to you about many religious examples of this in the past several months, from Catholics supporting the disarming of Israel to the plethora of anti-religious proposals on corporate ballots from Pfizer to Alphabet.
What we’re about to tell you about might be the most striking example of that: a massive Christian denomination using its finances to push abortion politics. The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (also known as the PCUSA) recently sponsored a shareholder proposal at Albertsons, a grocery company, pressuring the company into reporting on the ‘risks of state policies on reproductive health care.’ That’s code for ‘abortion restrictions.’ Let’s go through what exactly the largest Presbyterian denomination in America is arguing, and what we can learn from it.
The PCUSA’s very concerned that Albertsons employees might not be able to terminate their pregnancies in the face of new state-level legislation acknowledging the sanctity of life. And the proposal they used thousands of church dollars to sponsor isn’t anything nuanced or new. It’s a recitation of the standard pro-abortion talking points which have been appearing on corporate ballots for the past several years, claiming that 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.”
In essence, it attempts to frame its abortion advocacy as fiduciary by implying that the company will have trouble getting workers because its headquarters are in pro-life Idaho.
The argument that Idaho's abortion restrictions will lead to worker shortages is, to put it mildly, not supported by recent population trends. Idaho has experienced significant population inflows, with its population growing by approximately 1.5% from 2023 to 2024 alone. This growth rate places Idaho among the fastest-growing states in the U.S., with the population increasing by about 30,500 people in just one year. Since 2020, Idaho's population has grown by 8.2%, adding roughly 152,000 new residents.
Many of these new residents are moving from states like California, Washington, and Oregon. In 2023, around 17,700 people moved to Idaho from California, 14,600 from Washington, and 6,300 from Oregon. These states have notably permissive abortion laws. For instance, California allows abortions up to the point of fetal viability and has various measures ensuring access to abortion services. Oregon permits abortions at any stage of pregnancy without restrictions such as waiting periods or residency requirements. Similarly, Washington allows abortions up to the point of fetal viability and has laws ensuring privacy and access for all individuals seeking abortion care.
By the logic of the PCUSA proposal, it is actually the states with permissive abortion laws that should be considered at risk of worker shortages, given their population losses. The significant number of people moving from these states to Idaho suggests that the population inflows are driven by factors other than abortion laws, and that Idaho's conservative stance on abortion may even be attracting new residents. This trend refutes the claim that abortion restrictions will negatively impact the availability of workers in Idaho and suggests that states with more permissive abortion laws might be more at risk of facing worker shortages.
Additionally, Bowyer Research has filed an official Notice of Exempt Solicitation (NES) urging shareholders not to support the proposal. You can view the NES on this SEC page.
The abortion question is a political & moral one, to be sure. That’s one of the reasons we recently filed an official notice with the SEC urging Albertsons shareholders to vote against this proposal at the company’s annual meeting in August, explaining that the PCUSA’s proposal “is ultimately a ploy to draw Albertsons into a contentious political debate, one that lies outside the company’s core mission and fiduciary obligations.” But it’s also a question that strikes at the heart of business. As we’ve explained before, there’s no particularly fiduciary argument for a company supporting practices that kill its future customers. “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.”
Proposals like these are a key reminder of why stewardship is so important. As I explained on X, “This is why institutional control matters. You could be the most conservative PCUSA churchgoer alive - but they’ll still use your tithes to lobby for abortion.”
Now, of course, mainline churches such as the PCUSA have for some time given in to the pro-abortion agenda, but lest churches and ministries which hold to the sanctity of life brag, they should stop and ask how THEY are voting on abortion questions on ballots.
This recent Daily Signal article explains how deep the malaise goes in Christian institutions, with disturbing large pluralities voting in favor of concealing abortion data and defunding pro-life states. Not every denomination goes so far as to use its dollars to sponsor anti-Christian proposals — but how did you vote on the ones that do? (This is why our How You Voted reports matter, by the way.)
The same is true for numerous “faith based asset manager” many of whom have (while actively marketing to conservative Christians) inadvertently been voting anti-life.
It is high time that churches in these mainline denominations start asking questions about the weaponization of their pension plans. It is also high time for church and ministries to insist on an audit of ways in which their voting violates their teachings and the premises on which they raise donations. Bowyer Research performs proxy voting audits, and we’d be happy to help.
Thank you for being ahead of the curve and being part of our proxy voting and corporate engagement program with your own money. But I’m going to ask you to take a step further, ask your churches and the ministries you support to be willing to let us help them answer the question: “How did you vote this shareholder season?”
Jerry Bowyer is President of Bowyer Research.
Isaac Willour is a Corporate Relations Analyst at Bowyer Research.