The implication is that these CEOs prefer that their employees and customers not become mothers, or if they are mothers, not have more children. It apparently hasn’t occurred to them that unborn children will grow up to buy their products or perhaps work for their firms one day, and indeed all the employees they claim to be protecting were themselves, once, vulnerable in the womb.

At the end of the day, their argument isn’t really about restrictions being “bad for business.” What they care about most is that such policies, as they say, go “against our values.”

The CEO ad is another sign that the debate over abortion has entered a new phase. It isn’t enough to say that abortion should be safe, legal and rare, the old Bill Clinton formulation, because that implies a moral disapproval. Now, abortion is a positive good. A stance that used to be limited to the fringes is mainstream enough that CEOs are willing to sign up for it.