We need to talk. We’ve all accepted – some more grudgingly than others, perhaps after a Supreme Court decision (cough Citizens United cough) – that corporations are people. Right? They have rights, they can spend money on elections like Uncle Bob ranting at Thanksgiving, they’re people.
But if they’re people, we need to address a serious, ongoing tragedy: the rampant, unchecked practice of corporate abortion.
I’m talking about projects, products, initiatives – the very offspring of corporate conception! Think about it. A corporation has an idea (conception!). It invests resources, time, human effort (gestation!). Teams nurture it, develop it, pour their lifeblood into it. Marketing departments plan the baby shower (product launch!). Budgets are allocated (a trust fund!). Hopes and dreams for market domination (sending the kid to Harvard!) are formed.
This isn’t just code and plastic and marketing plans, people. If the parent entity is a person, then surely the fruit of its loins – its intellectual property, its carefully crafted product lines, its beta-tested software – must bear some semblance of personhood too, right? Aren’t these projects the children of these corporate persons?
And yet, what happens? A shift in the market? A quarterly report that looks a bit peaky? A new CEO with a different “vision”? Suddenly, WHAM! The project is “deprioritized.” It’s “sunsetted.” It’s “terminated.”
Let’s call it what it is: Corporate Abortion. It’s the cold, calculated, boardroom decision to end the life of a project-child. No tears, no regrets (except maybe for the severance packages), just a line item adjustment.
Now, consider this: As of Thursday, April 10, 2025, numerous states across this great nation have decided that terminating a pregnancy, even in its earliest stages, is not a right, but a crime. Legislatures, often funded by the very same corporate persons we’re discussing (oh, the irony!), have enacted laws equating abortion with murder, imposing severe penalties on the individuals involved. Personhood, they argue, begins at conception, and ending that life is a grave offense.
So, my question is this: Where is the consistency?
If Corporation A, headquartered in Austin, Texas (a state with some rather… firm views on abortion), decides to “abort” Project Chimera after millions invested and years of development because it might not hit Q4 targets – why isn’t the CEO facing murder charges?
If Corporation B, operating out of Boise, Idaho, “sunsets” a software product that thousands rely on, effectively orphaning its user base, shouldn’t the board of directors be hauled before a judge, facing the same legal jeopardy as a woman seeking healthcare in that state?
Why the double standard? Is the “life” of a corporate project, conceived in strategy sessions and gestated in R&D labs, somehow less sacred than the potential life recognized by these state laws? If we grant corporations the rights of personhood, shouldn’t they also bear the full responsibilities and consequences that come with it, especially in jurisdictions that have taken such a hard line on the sanctity of nascent life?
Shouldn’t there be mandatory waiting periods before cancelling a project? Required fiscal counseling? Should executives be forced to view detailed PowerPoint presentations showing the project’s potential before they’re allowed to terminate it? Shouldn’t anti-project-abortion groups picket outside corporate headquarters, holding signs with pictures of abandoned Gantt charts?
It seems only fair. If corporations are people, and states are criminalizing the termination of potential life, then it’s time we held these corporate persons accountable for their own frequent, and often ruthless, acts of termination. Let’s see those indictments for Project Murder One.
Or, you know, maybe – just maybe – the whole “corporations are people” thing is a fundamentally flawed legal fiction with absurd consequences when you follow its logic all the way down. But hey, what do I know? I’m just a blogger, not a Supreme Court justice.
