What does it mean to be a pro-life business? Can Catholic business leaders be expected to uphold a pro-life mission while also maintaining a lucrative bottom line? Catholic Business Journal interviews several Catholic business leaders who excel in answering these questions.
According to Catholic—and pro-life—Austin, TX, businessman Tim Van Dohlen, the truly committed Catholic has an obligation to strike a proper balance between the profit margin and a commitment to defend innocent human life.
The sacrifice involved in such a commitment is not lost on another businessman, Doug Scott, founder of Life Decisions International, in Front Royal, VA, which serves as leader of a watchdog group dedicated to encouraging corporations—Catholic or not—to sever ties with Planned Parenthood and other death-dealing abortion profiteers.
While Scott maintains a vigilant watch on these corporations, smaller operations, such as David Theisen’s Real Estate for Life, Highland, MI, are finding that balance between mission and profit.
Pro-life for life
Taking turns as both a businessman and a politician Tim Van Dohlen has made a name for himself among the elderly in Texas in the nursing care centers he’s been operating. He has served the Lone Star State as a state representative, 1973-1992, in the Texas State House.
Putting his business sense and passion for justice to work for the cause of life, in 2010 Van Dohlen helped open the John Paul II Life Center (recently renamed St. John Paul II Life Center). The center houses a medical clinic specializing in pro-life solutions to couples’ fertility challenges, and a crisis pregnancy center for unwed mothers. Located in Austin, TX, the center already has served more than 3,900 patients throughout the Southwest.
As a businessman, Van Dohlen sees being pro-life as an inseparable part of one’s person.
“The motto we developed for the JPII Life Center is ‘to embrace a better choice,’” he says. “We all have choices we have to make in our business, our family life, and every aspect of our lives. In the pro-life area, every day we are faced with contact with people, situations that we don’t expect to occur, and we have to be strong enough in our faith and our belief in the choices we make. Each choice we make is one that recognizes the dignity of individuals and demonstrates love of our fellow man.”
Characteristics of a pro-life business leader
The pro-life business leader, Van Dohlen says, must possess courage and wisdom—the courage to make a stand and the wisdom to discern true respect for human life from empty promises.
“To be pro-life means you have to be willing to stand up for that belief in very difficult and unexpected circumstances,” he says, “and not be afraid to talk about the importance of life itself, which is the very essence of social justice.”
Learning this lesson in his own business experience, Van Dohlen recalls a time he rented space in a building he owned to a pharmacy in which he had a minority interest. When the pharmacy’s majority owner decided he would start prescribing “Plan B” (levonorgestrel, an emergency contraception drug and abortifacient), Van Dohlen knew he had a decision to make.
“I was faced with the fact that the majority owner controls the ultimate decision on the business, but it’s my building,” he says. “What do I do? It didn’t take long to realize that I couldn’t allow that drug to be sold on property that I controlled…. So I said, well, you’re going to have to have it somewhere else. So it caused me to have to lose the occupant of the building and move out the business.”
Being a pro-life business leader, Van Dohlen says, doesn’t have to mean sacrificing profit, but it does require sacrifice.
“You have to go into business with your eyes open and realize we have a government today that is attempting to literally take away our constitutional rights,” he said. “And yet we have to stand up for those rights, including funding those efforts to protect those rights.”
Life decisions
Doug Scott, with Life Decision International, agrees.
By keeping an eye on companies supporting the abortion industry through substantial financial donations to Planned Parenthood (the country’s largest abortion provider and moneymaker), Doug Scott says Life Decision International is making it harder for companies to take a stance against innocent life.
“I had heard somewhere along the line that AT&T was supporting Planned Parenthood and I remember thinking, why in the world would a business be involved in something so controversial,” he said in a 2012 interview with this writer.
“That’s just bad business,” Scott continued, “not to mention the fact that that Planned Parenthood is not just controversial but deadly. So I figured if they’re doing it, there are a lot of others probably doing it too. I started researching and found, not to my surprise, but to my disgust, that there were a whole lot of companies supporting Planned Parenthood. Some, I found, were doing it out of ignorance, and then others do it because they know exactly what Planned Parenthood stands for and like what Planned Parenthood stands for.”
After giving Planned Parenthood $50,000 a year for 25 years, AT&T finally relented around 2010, Scott said, after LDI bore down on the mega-corporation with threats of boycotts and going public with their activities. Much to Scott’s surprise, AT&T relented and came off the LDI list of companies that support Planned Parenthood.
“When they stopped giving to Planned Parenthood,” Scott said in the same interview, “Planned Parenthood took out full page ads in national magazines and newspapers, attacking AT&T for caving in to what they perceived to be extremists. Much to my surprise, though, AT&T stuck with their position. Planned Parenthood’s attitude throughout was that AT&T owes them the money.”
Yet some companies remain obstinate in their support of Planned Parenthood, Scott added. Scott said these companies are willing to support an industry which destroys their future customers (and profits) despite having their names published in LDI’s annual list of pro-Planned Parenthood companies.
“JP Morgan-Chase is really bad,” he said. “Wells Fargo is horrible too. You probably don’t get worse than Wells Fargo. They have been supportive of Planned Parenthood where they would place ads in Planned Parenthood newsletters, declaring how proud they are to support Planned Parenthood and its mission. They’ve been the least cooperative of any company we’ve dealt with. If you go into the Planned Parenthood of Des Moines, Iowa, they’ve been given a plaque by Wells Fargo, stating how proud they were to help Planned Parenthood build the facility.”
Real life
The balance between bottom line and mission is exactly what Catholic businessman David Theisen has achieved through Real Estate for Life, which he founded in 2008.
Real Estate for Life, Theisen says, works like any other real estate referral program.
“If you or a friend or family member is looking to buy or sell a house, office, or any kind of domestic or commercial property anywhere in the world,” he says, “you call Real Estate For Life on 1-877-LIFE-US1 and we set you up with an expert agent with a proven track-record from a local franchised broker or strong independent. This agent is happy to get new business and so, when the sale is completed, he or she gives a portion of their fee to Real Estate For Life as a referral fee. Real Estate For Life gives 80 percent of that fee to one of the pro-life organizations we work with.”
For example, Theisen says, if a real estate agent closes on a $160,000 deal in Cleveland, that agent earns three percent and then sends a referral fee to Theisen—which would be about $1,200.
“We retain 20 percent of that fee,” he says, “and then send out 80 percent to pro-life activities.”
Because the business targets those already supporting pro-life work, Theisen says, he’s been able to build a modest but successful operation that benefits pro-life work and his own profit margin.
“We haven’t really experienced problems in promoting ourselves,” he says, “because we’re talking to pro-life groups, Catholic seminaries and parishes and so on.”
The business is something of a global operation too, Theisen adds, noting that he sends checks around the world to fight the culture of death. Real Estate for Life’s beneficiaries include pro-life organizations such as National Right to Life and American Life League, both in Washington, D.C.; LifeCanada, in Ottawa, Ontario; Hope Australia, an anti-euthanasia organization; and the Sisters of the Gospel of Life in Scotland.
Estimating that one-third of the 100 million Catholics in the U.S. are pro-life, Theisen says that, even if he attracted only a half of one percent of that number, Real Estate for Life stays in business.
“That’s market penetration,” he says. “That’s more than enough to produce half a million dollars worth of revenue a year.”
At 62, Theisen has had a good run of it—and he’s not ready to retire just yet, knowing his operation is still growing—which means untapped resources for the pro-life cause as well.
“Our business model is to target people who pray in front of abortion clinics and those who give money to pro-life activities,” he says. “It’s a good program, and working well, we just want to continue to build it up.”
What will you do?
What will you do to support pro-life efforts in your business or work? Feel free to let us know in the Comments section (you must register first to prevent spam), or on our FaceBook page.
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Joseph O’Brien is senior writer at Catholic Business Journal.