Omaha, NE — The world is running short of people and a major corporation shouldn't be giving away stockholders' money to groups that support abortion and other forms of population control that will inevitably reduce the number of the company's potential customers, a population research expert warns.
In a resolution submitted to Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire-Hathaway, and the company's 10,000 shareholders, Population Research Institute president Steven Mosher proposed that the company stop making charitable donations, especially to such abortion industry groups as Planned Parenthood, which has benefited from the company's largesse.
As a result of such contributions as those given to Planned Parenthood, pro-life groups are now boycotting the company's products and thus inflicting economic harm on the company and its stockholders, Mosher said.
The proposal argued that from a purely business sense funding abortion is self-defeating in that it robs the company of future potential customers.
Mosher introduced himself as head of the institute, which he described as “a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the case for people as the ultimate resource – the one resource that we as investors cannot do without – and debunking the hype about overpopulation, what the New York Times has called, and I quote, one of the 'myths of the twentieth century.'”
“Shareholder money is entrusted to the Board of Directors to be invested in a prudent manner for the shareholders,” Mosher said. “I think you all will agree, as the resolution states, that charitable contributions should serve to enhance shareholder value. Indeed this is already Berkshire-Hathaway's policy with regard to its operating subsidiaries. As Chairman Buffet explained in his Chairman's letter of 2001, 'We trust our managers to make gifts in a manner that delivers commensurate tangible or intangible benefits to the operations they manage.'
“We did not invest money in this company so it could be given to someone else's favorite charity,” Mosher said.
Mosher noted that Berkshire-Hathaway charitable money has been given to Planned Parenthood, a group which he said “is responsible for almost two hundred thousand abortions a year in the United States alone, and in countless more through its population control programs worldwide.
“We believe that abortion is the taking of a human life,” He explained. “Even if you disagree on this fundamental point, however, you must concur that these ongoing boycotts of Berkshire-Hathaway company products are not a good thing.
“It should be self-evident that Berkshire-Hathaway, like the economy as a whole, is dependent upon people. It is people who produce the products and services of the various companies we own, and it is people who buy them.
Now you may think that there is a superabundance of people, and that we will never run short, but this is not true. Half the countries of the world – including countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia – have birthrates below replacement. Europe and Japan are literally dying, filling more coffins than cradles each year.
“Dying populations may shrink the economic pie. We already see this happening in Japan and some European countries: How much of Japan's continuing economic malaise can be directly traced to a lack of young people to power the economy? They may also make economic development nearly impossible: Russia is having trouble finding its feet economically in part because of its demographic collapse. These problems will spread to many more countries in the near future.
“Charitable contributions to simple-minded population control programs, in which governments impose restrictions on childbearing, are not in Berkshire-Hathaway's interest. Such programs are not 'investing in humanity's future,' they are compromising humanity's future, and putting a roadblock in the way of future economic growth. There is no 'global share buyback' in store for those who fund population control programs, because such programs will rob the world of future consumers and producers and threaten to shrink the economic pie.”
In other words, helping fund abortion is not only supporting legalized murder of unborn babies; it's just plain bad for business.
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
