Procter & Gamble to cover employee travel for abortions
Procter & Gamble has joined a growing list of companies to expand healthcare coverage for travel expenses incurred while seeking abortions.
The Cincinnati-based company announced the policy in a statement released Tuesday, four days after the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson. That decision overturned Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the landmark precedents governing abortion access in the United States for the last 50 years.
The new policy, according to a P&G spokesperson, is an extension of existing coverage for expenses incurred traveling to receive treatment that is not available within a 50-mile radius.
Travel support under the company’s current healthcare plans is limited to specific conditions, such as organ transplants. Beginning Jan. 1, 2023, it will be expanded to include “a broad range of medical care.”
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“This is an important issue to many people, and we recognize their broad range of views,” a P&G spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal. “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.”
P&G has more than 10,000 employees in the Tri-State, including around 4,000 that work out of its downtown Cincinnati headquarters. It is the region’s largest private employer and its third-largest overall after the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
The consumer-goods company has 26,000 employees across the United States. It is the 18th most valuable company in the world with a market capitalization of $338 billion.
About a half-dozen of P&G’s manufacturing facilities are in states with abortion bans, according to the WSJ report.
A spokesperson for The Kroger Company also said last Friday the company’s healthcare plan covers some travel-related expenses. A host of other companies announced the same. The WSJ report says Target has since followed suit.
Prior to Dobbs, the Court’s 1992 decision in Casey guaranteed a national right to abortions into the 22nd week of pregnancy or the viability stage at which the fetus can survive outside the womb. Dobbs dispensed with that framework and left all decisions to the states, more than a dozen of which enacted so-called “trigger laws” immediately upon the decision’s publication last Friday.
Ohio’s recently enacted abortion bill prohibits abortions after cardiac activity is found, or as early as six weeks into pregnancy. Exceptions exist when the life of the mother is endangered, but there is no rape or incest exception, and the bill expressly prohibits abortions performed in response to genetic anomalies.
Kentucky’s bill prohibits abortions at all stages of gestation with the only exception being when the life of the mother is endangered.
Indiana did not have a trigger law on the books prior to Dobbs and so abortions remain legal there for the time being.
Enquirer Media partner Fox 19 provided this report.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Procter & Gamble to cover employee travel for abortions
