Headline RoundupJuly 6th, 2022

How Will Companies Be Able To Cover Abortion Travel Costs?

Summary from the AllSides News Team

A number of U.S. companies have pledged to cover their employees' travel costs for out-of-state abortions. How feasible is the idea?

Amazon, Apple, Disney and Tesla are just a few of the corporate entities agreeing to cover travel costs for employees who live in states where abortions are widely restricted. Whether employees would fund their expenditures through a company's insurer or be directly reimbursed by the company itself is unclear. Some Big Tech companies such as Google are taking measures to protect women's personal data, but many other large companies have refrained from taken a strong public stance.

Corporations are generally self-insured, which means they pay for all claims and have more flexibility to decide what employee plans will cover. A third party then processes the claims on their behalf. While it's currently not against the law to travel to states where abortion is legal, there are efforts in some Republican-led states to change that.

Many progressive voices were supportive of these corporate pledges, but some also said companies shouldn't be involved in a "personal, private manner" and that this dilemma accentuates an underlying "troubling" trend where the public is becoming increasingly reliant on Corporate America to solve their problems "because the government will not." Some conservative voices emphasized how many pro-abortion companies in the U.S. are known for often "kowtowing" and having "booming business relations" with China, which is "notorious" for its modern human rights abuses. Some right-rated reports noted that Meta and other corporations have "banned" workers from discussing the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.

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