Gov. Murphy To Texas Companies: Come To NJ, Where Abortion Is Legal

NEW JERSEY — With abortions becoming nearly impossible to secure in Texas, Gov. Phil Murphy has a pitch for companies in the Lone Star State: move business to New Jersey. The governor wrote a letter to the Houston Chronicle arguing that businesses should relocate to states that ensure abortion rights now that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade.

The Texas Supreme Court allowed a 1925 law banning abortion to take effect, allowing the state to impose fines and other civil penalties. Texas has a separate trigger ban with no exceptions for rape or incest set to take effect later this summer.

New Jersey codified the right to an abortion in January and passed laws July 1 expanding protections for out-of-staters who travel here for the procedure. Read more: Abortion Protections For Out-Of-Staters Become NJ Law

"Abortion rights may not, on the surface, appear to be an economic issue," Murphy wrote in the letter published Friday. "But the reality is that as more states move backward on individual freedoms, businesses can no longer sit silent. Individual rights and freedoms are an economic issue."

NJ: Poor Ratings For Business Climate

In terms of economic factors, critics have called New Jersey a poor climate for businesses. The Garden State ranked ninth-worst on CNBC's list of Top States for Businesses in 2022, while Texas placed fifth-highest. In all, CNBC measured how well the states performed across 88 metrics in 10 categories on the list released Wednesday.

CNBC gave New Jersey the following ranks in each categories:

• workforce: 23th
• infrastructure: 34th
• cost of doing business: 45th
• economy: 50th
• life, health and inclusion: eighth
• technology and innovation: 27th
• business friendliness: 47th

But the life, health and inclusion category, where New Jersey ranked highest, draws parallels to Murphy's messaging.

"Combine an era of enhanced social consciousness with a growing worker shortage, and it explains why, now more than ever, companies are demanding that states offer a welcoming and inclusive environment for employees," writes CNBC's Scott Cohn.

Murphy claimed that businesses can more easily recruit and retain talent where employees can retain a high quality of life. That includes access to certain freedoms, such as reproductive-health rights, the governor says.

"Certainly, we cannot expect any business to leave Texas overnight," Murphy wrote. "But with the criminalization of a woman’s right to her own bodily autonomy in Texas, it raises the question as to which individual rights state lawmakers will seek to overturn next. Marriage equality? Access to contraception? The ability of parents to support their transgender and LGBTQ children? None of these should be considered sacred and unassailable rights to any Texan anymore. But they are in New Jersey."

Will It Work? Blue-State Governors Are Trying

Several Democratic governors — including those in California, Illinois and Connecticut — have recently tried to recruit businesses away from states with restrictive abortion laws.

Murphy's office sent letters to more than 50 companies in states with anti-abortion laws, including Georgia, Florida, Missouri and Ohio, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported June 10.

It remains to be seen whether the pitches will work. Several major companies have announced they will pay for employees to travel for abortions if their states don't allow it. Lyft and Uber said they will fully cover legal fees for drivers sued for transporting an abortion patient.

But uprooting business to another state is a gesture likely to have greater impact on a company's bottom line, and it remains unknown whether corporations will go that far to express support for abortion rights.

Christopher Thornberg, founder of Beacon Economics, called it "just nonsensical" that a business would move to a blue state because of abortion access. (Thornberg has advised both the California treasurer's an controller's offices.)

"Businesses don’t locate somewhere because of abortion access or not," he told Politico. "Where you locate is a function of 100 things, and that is such a trivial part of the conversation."

Read Murphy's letter to the Houston Chronicle here.