Many companies are now offering to pay for some or all of an employee's abortion expenses if she cannot obtain the life-taking procedure near her home or office. Indications of such policy changes began almost two months ago when Politico obtained a leaked document saying the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade in its ruling involving a Mississippi lawsuit (Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization).
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled to overturn Roe, the list of companies offering to pay for an abortion is expected to grow. Investor/activist Scott Shepard of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research thinks that's a bad idea. For one thing, says Shepard, a company risks upsetting its consumers – and potentially its investors as well.
"By definition, if the company is using company money to fund this policy and there is no other money to use, then they're using shareholder assets to fund abortions," explains Shepard.
"And unless they set up their own company rule that [they will] pay for the abortion until the 12th week or the 15th week or the 20th week and [told women] We'll fly you anywhere in the United States, then they've signed themselves up for the most extremist law anywhere in the country and they've made that company policy," he continues.
"So, not only are they using the money to support abortions, they're using some of that shareholders' money to fund very end-of-term, most extreme possible abortions."
He adds in a press release:
"Whichever way the companies go, the CEOs who allowed themselves to fall into this trap will find themselves obliged to assert, as usual, that this additional link in a long chain of left-wing political activism is really no such thing.
"This will leave the CEOs to retreat further to the claim that the move had nothing whatever to do with politics; rather, they acted because it was in the demonstrable long-term best financial interest of their companies."
Shepard expects lawsuits will be filed.
Companies offering abortion-related benefits include PayPal, Yelp, Starbucks, Meta, Amazon, Disney, Apple, and Tesla.
