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After several states including Texas and Oklahoma passed restrictive abortion laws, some companies, among them Amazon, Citigroup and Yelp, have told employees that they will cover their travel costs for abortion access.
And in light of the leaked draft opinion revealing the Supreme Court intends to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion in 1973, there have been questions about what happens next, including which states would “trigger” a ban on abortion as soon as the rule is overturned, and which states (and countries) would still allow abortion.
In fact, “can you travel to another state for an abortion?” was a breakout Google search in the day following the leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion, which means the search term spiked by more than 5,000%.
Read more: If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, what happens next?
So here are some of the companies that have said they will cover travel costs for their employees seeking abortions, and how much they will reimburse.
Amazon
Amazon
AMZN,
told staff on the day of the Supreme Court leak that the company will cover travel expenses for all non-life threatening medical treatments, including abortions. The e-commerce giant, which is the second largest private employer in the U.S. behind Walmart
WMT,
said it will reimburse up to $4,000 per year for such expenses.
The new benefit is effective retroactively to Jan. 1, and applies when the medical operation is unavailable within 100 miles of the employee’s home, and virtual care is not possible. It is open to U.S. employees (including warehouse and office workers) or covered dependents enrolled in Premera or Aetna health plans.
Citigroup
Citigroup
C,
also began covering travel expenses for U.S. employees forced to go out-of-state for abortions earlier in 2022. About 8,500 of the banking giant’s 65,000 U.S. employees are in Texas, which has banned abortions in the state after six weeks of pregnancy.
“In response to changes in reproductive health care laws in certain states in the U.S., beginning in 2022 we provide travel benefits to facilitate access to adequate resources,” the company said in an April 2022 filing.
Yelp
Yelp
YELP,
the crowd-sourced reviews platform, will cover travel expenses for both employees and their dependents who need to go out-of-state for abortions. Yelp has 4,000 employees, including 200 workers in Texas.
Yelp employees can submit the receipts for their travel expenses directly to their health insurance company, so “no one else at Yelp is ever going to know who is accessing this, or how or when, and it will be a reimbursement that comes through the insurance provider directly,” Yelp’s chief diversity officer Miriam Warren said in April 2022.
“We’ve long been a strong advocate for equality in the workplace, and believe that gender equality cannot be achieved if women’s healthcare rights are restricted,” Warren also said in a statement at the time.
Other ways companies are supporting abortion access
Ride-sharing service Lyft
LYFT,
announced in April 2022 that it will pay any legal fees for its drivers if they are sued for bringing women to clinics to receive abortions, which came as a result of the strict anti-abortion bills in Oklahoma and Texas. The Oklahoma bill, for example, would allow a person to sue another individual who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.”
“This law is incompatible with people’s basic rights to privacy, our community guidelines, the spirit of rideshare, and our values as a company,” Lyft wrote in a blog post.
Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of competitor Uber UBER, has tweeted that his company would support its drivers in the same way.
In 2021, Texas-based dating-app company Bumble, which prides itself on being women-founded and women-led, created a relief fund supporting the reproductive rights of women and people across the gender spectrum who seek abortions in the state.
And Match.com’s CEO Shar Dubey (not the company itself) also created a fund to help Match employees in Texas to seek abortions outside the state at around the same time.
