Review company Yelp has joined banking giant Citigroup in promising to cover travel expenses for employees seeking out-of-state abortions. The new policy is in response to states enacting pro-life laws, which soon will be able to take effect if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in this term’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Yelp has only about 4,000 employees, 200 of whom live in Texas, where the state’s Heartbeat Act protects unborn children from abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. The company announced that as of now, its new policy will apply to employees in Texas, as well as Oklahoma, where a ban on most abortions was recently signed, though it is expected to be challenged and blocked in court before it can take effect, a fact left out of most media coverage of Yelp’s policy.
“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,” Yelp’s chief diversity officer said in a statement after the new policy was announced. A Yelp spokesperson said the policy will help the company retain employees in the current labor market.
As of now, this policy will be mostly useless in practice, because with Roe and Casey in place, abortion providers immediately challenge every state pro-life law and succeed in having those laws blocked in court. In a post-Roe America, however, expect to see more companies following in Yelp’s footsteps as a means of undermining pro-life policy.