Cards Against Humanity is an irreverent classic in the realm of party games. Ironically though, the company has a history of supporting charities and participating in social justice issues. Its latest project involves donating profits from Republican states to abortion funds.
Cards Against Humanity is a fill-in-the-blank game that asks players to choose the funniest or most offensive response to a prompt to get points. Answers range from “The Westbro Baptist Church” to “Harry Potter erotica”, and continue to expand with every new expansion pack launched.
The most recent card packs were released in early August, just months after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. The Court’s decision triggered abortion bans in over half of US states.
With their latest card pack release, Cards Against Humanity announced that all sales made in states with abortion bans would be donated to the National Network of Abortion Funds. The company also donated an extra $100,000 directly to the Network.
The NNAF funds abortions for those who can’t afford them on their own, and sometimes covers travel costs for people having to travel interstate to access abortion services. Reports from abortion rights groups have noted a significant increase in out-of-state calls from people seeking abortions.
Customers in red states like Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Utah and Kentucky are directly addressed on the Cards Against Humanity website. “While the packs were being printed, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and your state immediately turned itself into a dystopian forced-birth hellscape,” reads the site, “So we’re donating 100% of profits from orders to your nightmare-state to the National Network of Abortion Funds”.
Cards Against Humanity also conducted their own survey of residents in the ‘nightmare-states’* in question, asking questions related to abortion rights and reproductive science. Only 37% of respondents in states with total bans (abortion banned from conception) were aware of the ban and its reach.
50% of people in the surveyed states believed women should be imprisoned for accessing an illegal abortion, and 7% believed execution to be the appropriate penalty. 71% of anti-choice respondents thought “casual sex, or sexual promiscuity, is a major cause of societal problems”, and 49% believed banning abortion would fix this.
Cards Against Humanity’s Charitable Track Record
The decision to donate to the NNAF is far from the first time Cards Against Humanity has weighed in on political issues. Two years ago they donated their entire Black Friday budget directly to charity, with five organisations receiving $50,000 each.
In 2014, they gave $250,000 in support of the Sunlight Foundation, a charity which allows the public to see which organisations are funding politicians. When they released Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton packs in the run-up to the 2016 election, all proceeds from both were donated to Clinton’s campaign.
They have also gained notoriety for their Black Friday ‘pranks’ and holiday campaigns, which not only poke fun at the hyper-consumerism of holidays but also often contribute to charity.
They’ve given proceeds from selling literal bull faeces to a charity working to eradicate poverty in one such Black Friday prank. Other profits have gone to a week’s paid holiday for their factory workers in China, 300 public school programs in high poverty areas, and the Wikimedia Foundation.
Cards Against Humanity even sponsors a full-tuition scholarship every year for a woman in a STEM field. “We give a ton [of money] away to charity and the causes we like,” said co-founder Max Temkin in a 2017 interview. “We never felt like it was our money to begin with.”
Cover image: “Cards Against Humanity” by tom_bullock is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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*these states are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
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