Why the C.E.O. Behind Match.com and Tinder Took a Stand on the Texas Abortion Law
In May, Match.com and Tinder, the two largest dating apps in the United States, published a joint statement about their opposition to the so-called “heartbeat” abortion law. In their statement, the companies said not only would they not implement services that enable abortion, but they would also challenge the existing laws on their own. “We strongly believe that women should have the right to make their own decisions about the terms of their own bodies,” they wrote. “However, we cannot simply stand by and allow legislators to impose new terms on women’s bodies.”
Yet just three weeks before that statement, the company’s co-founder and CEO, Brian Ameringer, publicly announced his backing of the law in an op-ed in the New York Times.
“I believe strongly that pro-abortion rights people and women need to be involved with, and to have a place in, the conversation,” Ameringer wrote. “People who oppose the pro-choice side need to understand that we need to be present in the room where decisions are made.” Ameringer called himself “a fervent supporter” of “people who oppose abortion at any time in pregnancy, and I believe that many of those people should welcome the conversation about how to proceed to that discussion.”
Ameringer is now backtracking from that statement in a pair of interviews with the Atlantic that offer a new level of detail about the company’s history and the political pressure that is keeping it from enacting services on its sites that could allow abortion. He now says that his company’s opposition to the bill was not merely a matter of “abortion-related content.” He says that the “heartbeat” laws are, in fact, a restriction on the rights of people to make a simple decision about their own bodies.
“I think the heartbeats are a violation of the women’s rights to make their own decisions about their own bodies,” he tells the Atlantic