While American states are now free to ban abortion, several of Hollywood’s most established companies are announcing that their employees will benefit from the reimbursement of their travel expenses for abortion.
Several American studios, including Netflix and Disney, have announced that they will cover the costs of their employees who will have to travel for abortions. The information, relayed by variety, comes a few hours after the revocation of the right to abortion in the United States by the Supreme Court. This decision now makes each state free to prohibit abortion within its borders.
Disney issued a statement to its employees on Friday: the American entertainment giant ensures that it remains “committed to providing comprehensive access to quality and affordable care”. The studio’s health insurance includes reproductive and family planning care for employees “wherever they live”. Thus, the company specifies that if an employee does not have access to certain care where she is, a travel grant provides “coverage to receive care of the same level at another location.” On the side of Netflix, a spokesperson for the platform confided in variety:
“Netflix provides travel reimbursement coverage for their full-time U.S. employees and dependents who need to travel for cancer treatment, transplants, gender transition care, or for abortion. This is an allowance of $10,000 for life, per employee (…).”
Hollywood mobilized
Many Hollywood companies have made the same commitment to their employees, as relayed by the HollywoodReporter. Notably Paramount, whose CEO Bob Barkish emailed employees:
“Across the country, we have entered a period of deep uncertainty,” he said. “In the face of this uncertainty, we want to be very clear about what will not change at Paramount.” He then recalls that the company’s health policy provides for coverage of travel expenses “if covered medical services, such as abortion, are prohibited where you are.”
The same goes for the United Talents Agency, Comcast or even Condé Nast, publisher of voguefrom New Yorker or even of Vanity Fair.
Many states possibly retained
The revocation of the right to abortion intervened this Friday does not make it illegal, but returns the United States to the situation in force before the emblematic judgment “Roe v. Wade” of 1973, when each State was free of allow or not. Given the fractures in the country, half of the states, especially in the more conservative and religious south and centre, could banish it in the more or less short term. Missouri was the first to declare that abortion would be banned within its borders this Friday.
Restrictive abortion laws have proliferated across the United States in recent years. Concern grew last May with the leak of a draft Supreme Court decision, which appeared to be poised to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade.
