Indiana Company That Threatened To Leave the State Over Abortion Ban Has History of Donating To Anti-Abortion Politicians

After Indiana’s governor signed legislation banning abortion last week, some of the state’s largest employers spoke out against the law—to an extent.

The pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly is Indiana’s largest employer, and would therefore presumably have a good deal of political influence. The company issued a statement saying that because of the new law, which bans abortion in nearly all cases, they “will be forced to plan for more employment growth outside our home state.”

As far as condemnations go, that’s a pretty tepid statement. It also didn’t go unnoticed that the company waited until after the bill was signed into law to issue it. IndyStar notes that the company had “multiple opportunities to publicly comment” on the issue in recent weeks, including two open letters condemning the ban that were circulating in the state’s business communities—one signed by more than 60 business leaders and another from the ACLU bearing the signatures of over 200 businesses. Eli Lilly refused to sign either.

But not only did the company issue a bland statement when it was too late to use their influence in any way that could have mattered, but it turns out Eli Lilly has been funding some of the anti-abortion politicians behind the ban in the first place.

The investigative I-Team 8 found that since 2019, Eli Lilly’s political action committee has donated a total of $87,500 to state lawmakers who cast votes on the ban. The majority of that—more than $50,000—went to Republicans who voted for the ban. The PAC also donated $31,000 to the Republican governor’s campaign.

In a statement to I-Team 8, Lilly said the PAC “contributes to candidates — regardless of party affiliation — who understand the value of a vibrant pharmaceutical ecosystem and support pro-innovation policies to address unmet patient needs.”

Except clearly the anti-abortion candidates don’t understand those things, or else the company would not be threatening to have to leave the state. We just went through this with Disney. Companies cannot claim to support conservative candidates because of their stance on “business” and then be surprised when the rest of those politicians’ regressive agendas affect business.

Abortion has always been an economic issue and abortion advocates have long been begging people and businesses like this one to understand that. None of this popped up out of nowhere, people in power just refuse to listen.

(image: Jon Cherry/Getty Images)