Amazon to pay up to $4,000 in travel expenses for abortions as Supreme Court threatens Roe v Wade
Amazon has offered to pay its employees up to $4,000 in expenses to travel to get an abortion as the Supreme Court moves to dismantle Roe v Wade.
The tech giant sent an email to staff on Monday, seen by Reuters, announcing that it will foot the bill if employees need to travel to other states to seek non-life-threatening medical treatments such as abortions.
The benefit, which can be backdated to 1 January, applies if a treatment is not available within 100 miles (161 km) of an employee’s home and if virtual care is not possible.
Amazon joins other large employers such as Citigroup, Yelp, Apple, Bumble and HP which have already announced similar policies as companies seek to retain their workforce in states where abortion rights are being rolled back.
The company memo came just hours before a leaked US Supreme Court draft opinion revealing that the nation’s highest court had decided to strike down the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that granted Americans a constitutional right to an abortion.
The draft majority opinion on the case, obtained by Politico, was written by Justice Samuel Alito and revealed that he and four other conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – had voted to overturn the ruling.
Liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented while it is unclear how Chief Justice John Roberts planned to vote.
In the opinion, the majority said that the ruling had been wrongly decided in the past and that decisions around abortion access should be decided by politicians, not by the courts.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” writes in the majority opinion.
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
The court drafted the opinion after agreeing to hear a case around a Mississippi law which criminalised abortions after 15 weeks.
Never in the history of the Supreme Court has a draft opinion been leaked and the court has so far refused to comment.
Politico said it had conducted “an extensive review process” and had confirmed the draft’s authenticity.
The opinion is a draft and it is possible that votes will change prior to its publication which had been expected in late June.
However, if released as it stands it will backpedal on abortion rights and access to reproductive health for millions of women across America and leave many with no choice but to either carry an unwanted pregnancy to term or seek out potentially dangerous illegal healthcare options.
While Amazon’s announcement came ahead of Monday night’s bombshell revelation, it came after Republican-led states have taken their own legal steps in recent months to restrict abortion access.
Last year, Texas led the way introducing the most extreme abortion law in the US and effectively undercutting Roe v Wade.
The “Texas Heartbeat Act” bans abortions from when a foetal heartbeat can be detected – typically after just six weeks, at a time before many women even know they are pregnant.
Texas’ law makes no exceptions for women who are victims of rape or incest and gives private citizens the right to sue anyone who gets an abortion or helps someone get an abortion.
While the law drastically limited access, a woman’s legal right to have an abortion in America was protected under Roe v Wade.
About two dozen other states including Alabama and Oklahoma have laws ready to go to effectively ban abortion if Roe v Wade is overturned.
In 1973, the landmark ruling recognised a woman’s constitutional right to choose to have an abortion across America for the first time and effectively made it legal nationwide.
