By Weston Blasi
Such coverage includes “family planning and reproductive benefits, from fertility treatments to surrogacy and adoption services, pregnancy prevention including vasectomy coverage and access to contraception and pregnancy termination,” a Mastercard spokesperson told Bloomberg .
Meta Platforms
Facebook parent company Meta Platforms /zigman2/quotes/205064656/composite META -1.23% said it will cover up to $4,000 worth of travel costs for employees seeking abortions., Reuters reported on June 24.
There are more details to come, as Meta is still “assessing how best to do so given the legal complexities involved,” a spokesperson told Reuters.
Microsoft
Microsoft said it will “continue to do everything we can under the law to protect our employees’ rights and support employees” in accessing critical healthcare. Those protections include services like abortion and gender-affirming care in the U.S., a Microsoft official told Reuters .
“This support is being extended to include travel expense assistance for these and other medical services where access to care is limited in availability in an employee’s home geographic region,” the statement continued.
Netflix
Netflix Inc. offers travel reimbursement for full-time employees in the United States, as well as their dependents, who need to travel for health procedures including and gender-affirming care and abortions a company spokesperson informed CNN . The company provides a lifetime allowance of $10,000 for employees or their dependents per service.
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble, which is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, said it would similarly assist employees who need to travel for abortion-related healthcare . Ohio is one of the states with an abortion ban that triggered after Roe v. Wade was overturned .
P&G’s policy will reimburse employees for travel expenses for qualified medical care if it is not available within 50 miles of the employee’s residence. And abortion is considered a qualified medical procedure, the company told the Wall Street Journal .
“This is an important issue to many people, and we recognize their broad range of views,” a P&G spokesperson told WSJ. “As we have for many years, P&G supports our employees in having access to a wide range of healthcare options so they can determine what’s best for them and their families.”
PayPal
Financial services company PayPal /zigman2/quotes/208054269/composite PYPL +0.48% announced in May it would “support” employees who are impacted by abortion-related bans or restrictions depending on the state they live in.
“We communicated directly with Texas employees about our commitment to providing equitable health care benefits,” Kausik Rajgopal, the executive vice president at PayPal, told employees in a May 9 memo viewed by CBS News .
See also: Medical groups warn of ‘negative mental-health outcomes’ after Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade
PayPal will “extend this support to any state where legislation following the court’s decision leads to diminished healthcare access with respect to reproductive health,” Rajgopal said.
Starbucks
Starbucks /zigman2/quotes/207508890/composite SBUX +0.21% added a worker healthcare benefit that offers to reimburse the travel cost for employees enrolled in its program who seek an abortion or gender-affirming procedure, but who cannot access these services within 100 miles of where they live. This also applies to the workers’ dependents.
“Regardless of what the Supreme Court ends up deciding, we will always ensure our partners have access to quality healthcare,” wrote Sara Kelly, acting executive vice president of partner resources, in a letter posted to the Starbucks site . “Whatever healthcare choice you believe is right for you and your family, you deserve access to those services and the benefits that Starbucks provides.”
Target
Beginning in July, Target will cover travel expenses that employees could take on when looking for healthcare including reproductive services, mental health care and cardiac care outside of their community, a Target spokesperson told MarketWatch.
“For years, our healthcare benefits have included some financialsupport for travel, when team members needed select healthcareprocedures that weren’t available where they live,” the representative said. But the company began re-evaluating its benefits a few months ago, and “this effort became even more relevant as we learned about the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion, given that it would impact access to healthcare in some states.”
Tesla
The “People and Culture” portion of Tesla’s newly released 2021 Impact Report noted that the company wants its benefits to exceed the standards of the manufacturing industry. And that includes an expanded “Safety Net” program and health insurance offering that covers travel and lodging support for Tesla employees “who may need to seek healthcare services that are unavailable in their home state.”
While CEO Elon Musk did not immediately comment, he tweeted in September that he believes “government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness. That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics.”
Yahoo
The Apollo Global Management-owned /zigman2/quotes/203829595/composite APO -1.47% Yahoo said it will also help employees with healthcare-related travel costs in the wake of Roe’s reversal.
“Yahoo told its employees in May that the company would offer up to $5,000 reimbursement toward travel and lodgings for anyone that has to travel more than 100 miles to access medical procedures ,” a company representative told MarketWatch.
Yelp
Yelp /zigman2/quotes/201334325/composite YELP +0.17% , 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 .
Related: ‘Access to safe abortion saves lives,’ WHO chief says
“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 /zigman2/quotes/208999293/composite LYFT +0.29% announced in April 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 /zigman2/quotes/211348248/composite UBER -0.33% , 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 /zigman2/quotes/207178501/composite MTCH -0.77% 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.
Salesforce /zigman2/quotes/200515854/composite CRM -0.21% CEO Marc Benioff also said in 2021 that the company would cover relocation costs for its Texas employees impacted by the state’s restrictive abortion laws.
“If you have concerns about access to reproductive healthcare in your state, Salesforce will help relocate you and members of your immediate family,” a Salesforce company memo stated.
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