(Bloomberg) — PayPal Holdings Inc. said it will cover employees’ costs to access abortions if they need to travel to receive such care.
The decision followed an abortion ruling earlier this year by the Texas Supreme Court, according to a person familiar with the matter. The court upheld legislation that banned abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
This month, after a leaked US Supreme Court ruling that suggested abortion rights might be restricted nationwide, the payments giant told employees that the policy applies in any state that enacts legislation limiting staffers’ access to reproductive care, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News.
“The recently leaked draft of the US Supreme Court’s decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade has raised a number of employee questions and concerns,” Kausik Rajgopal, PayPal’s chief human resources officer, said in the memo. “As a PayPal community, we’ll continue to work to provide equitable access to health care benefits for our employees.”
More than two dozen states are either “certain or likely” to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned, which will force many people across the country to travel for treatment, according to the Guttmacher Institute. With the move, PayPal joins companies including Citigroup Inc. and Mastercard Inc. in promising to cover employees’ travel costs incurred to access abortion.
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