'Free market' Texas Republicans want to ban retailers that support abortion rights

Far-right Republican state lawmakers want to make it impossible for Texans to buy anything on Amazon, buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, or even buy a Tesla, all to further their attack on abortion.

Fourteen Republicans want to pass a law that bans any company from doing business in the state of Texas with companies that have pledged to assist employees in obtaining abortion care outside of the Lone Star State, The Texas Tribune reports.

GOP state Rep. Briscoe Cain and 13 other Republican “members of the state House of Representatives have pledged to introduce bills in the coming legislative session that would bar corporations from doing business in Texas if they pay for abortions in states where the procedure is legal.”

“This would explicitly prevent firms from offering employees access to abortion-related care through health insurance benefits. It would also expose executives to criminal prosecution under pre-Roe anti-abortion laws the Legislature never repealed, the legislators say.”

An NCRM search found a dozen companies that have publicly vowed to assist their employees access abortions outside of Texas, including Tesla, which recently moved to Texas from California.

Other companies include Amazon, Starbucks, Lyft, Uber, Salesforce, Yelp, Match Group, Bumble, Apple, Levi Strauss, and CitiBank.

Back in March Rep. Cain – who was accused by Democrat Beto O’Rourke of making a “death threat” against him – targeted CitiBank, saying “he had sent a cease-and-desist letter to Citigroup’s chief executive, Jane Fraser, calling the policy a ‘misuse of shareholder money,'” The New York Times reported.

At that time Cain threatened to ban local governments from doing business with any company that assisted employees. Now he’s set the bar higher by wanting to ban the companies from doing business in Texas entirely.