Many Fortune 100 companies offer paid “abortion travel” benefits but do not openly share childcare benefits, a report released Tuesday found.
At least 42 Fortune 100 companies such as Walmart, Amazon and Walt Disney publicly state that they cover the costs for employees to travel out-of-state to receive abortions, yet only 22 openly mention their childcare benefits, according to a report by the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Many companies also offer assistance for alternative family options, such as surrogacy and in vitro fertilization (IVF), which may incentivize employees to delay parenthood.
“[A] significant number of these corporations have simultaneously begun promoting and incentivizing options such as surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, egg freezing, and travel for abortions—options that encourage female employees in particular to postpone or even forego motherhood in order to advance in their careers,” Alexandra DeSanctis, the report’s co-author, said in a statement. “Real support for women in the workplace would prioritize reincorporating female employees who have left the workforce for a time to care for children, offering greater flexibility to working fathers so they can be more present to their families, and making as much room as possible for mothers to take on flexible part-time or remote work.”
The report detailed that many companies choose to cover the cost of employees’ abortions — even up to thousands of dollars for out-of-state travel — because it is cheaper than covering paid maternity leave and offering other childcare benefits. Presenting options such as egg freezing and IVF may give female employees a “false sense” of security around “their future fertility,” convincing some to delay having children for the sake of their career only to later learn “that these methods are unreliable and/or highly burdensome,” the report explains.
Additionally, four of the companies that offer abortion travel benefits fail to name any benefits they offer for adoptive parents, the report found.
“Transparency matters because it reveals whether companies offer support for parents and families,” the report reads. “Strikingly, the companies that offer the most robust family benefits and that are most transparent about those benefits are also more likely to have announced coverage for abortion and abortion-related travel expenses.”
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