A Democratic super PAC led by a former president of Planned Parenthood is taking aim at AT&T for donations the company has made to lawmakers who sponsored the bill outlawing most abortions in Texas.
The PAC, American Bridge, plans to run ads on the digital version of The Dallas Morning News starting Tuesday, and a television ad will also run soon, a member of the PAC told CNBC.
A similar ad is set to be run in Florida at a later date because a Republican lawmaker has introduced a similar bill in that state, the PAC member said.
“AT&T helped fund the anti-abortion politicians who wrote the dangerous law,” CNBC reported a copy of the digital ad says. A picture of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is shown on-screen.
The ad tells voters to ”Tell @ATT to get #Offthebanwagon” and “stop funding anti-abortion extremists in Texas.”
Though AT&T is one of the top donors to lawmakers who backed the bill, known as Senate Bill 8, giving more than $300,000 to them since 2018, according to the news site Popular Information, AT&T counters that the company takes no stand on abortion and donated to opponents of the bill as well.
“AT&T has never taken a position on the issue of abortion, and the Texas legislation was no exception. AT&T did not endorse nor support passage of Senate Bill 8 in the Texas legislature,” a company spokesman said in an email to CNBC.
“AT&T’s employee political action committees have never based contribution decisions on a legislator’s positions on the issue of abortion, and employee PAC contributions to Texas legislators went to both opponents and supporters of Senate Bill 8,” the email continued.
No policy change is planned in the company’s giving, the spokesman added.
Cecile Richards, a co-chair of American Bridge and former president of Planned Parenthood, told CNBC that the spots are only the beginning of their fight.
“This abortion ban — part of the Republican plan to make reproductive health care completely out-of-reach — is devastating, which is why companies that backed the lawmakers responsible for this cannot be permitted to bury their heads in the sand,” Richards said.
