While much of corporate America has remained quiet about the potential legal bombshell, some companies have taken a public stance and adopted new policies that expand employees' access to abortions.
Several corporations including Amazon and Starbucks have announced expanded health benefits to pay for travel fees incurred by workers seeking an abortion if the procedure is unavailable near where they live, as employees in states like Oklahoma and South Dakota face the prospect of stronger abortion restrictions.
(Max Zahn. “Amazon, Starbucks among corporations bolstering abortion coverage.” https://abcnews.go.com/Business/amazon-starbucks-corporations-bolstering-abortion-coverage/story?id=84846669. ABC News. May 20, 2022.)
"Like many of you, I'm deeply concerned by the draft Supreme Court opinion related to the constitutional right to abortion that was first established by Roe v. Wade," Sara Kelly, Starbucks' acting executive vice president for employee resources, said Monday in a memo to employees.
"When actions impact your access to health care, we will work on a way to make sure you feel supported," she added.
Meanwhile, rideshare companies Lyft and Uber have vowed to provide legal support for drivers if they face lawsuits for driving passengers to get an abortion.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of management at Yale University who convenes meetings with top CEOs on social issues, told ABC News many of the corporations that introduced policy changes are in the tech sector, where employees tend to be young and liberal.
"Companies that take a stand on a highly divisive political issue like this one can get in trouble with some stakeholders," Sandra Waddock, a professor at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College who specializes in corporate responsibility, told ABC News. "But companies implementing these policies don't want their employees to be harmed, and it probably makes sense to make sure their employees are happy."
(Max Zahn. “Amazon, Starbucks among corporations bolstering abortion coverage.” https://abcnews.go.com/Business/amazon-starbucks-corporations-bolstering-abortion-coverage/story?id=84846669. ABC News. May 20, 2022.)
Here are some companies that have pledged to reimburse employees for the costs associated with traveling out of state for an abortion:
Starbucks
Amazon
Citigroup
Yelp
Microsoft
Apple
United Talent Agency
Levi Strauss
Tesla
Salesforce
Power Home Remodeling
Amalgamated Bank
Bumble
Chobani
Doordash
Hims & Hers
Interpublic Group, Publicis Groupe and WPP
Lyft
(Maggie McGrath and Jena McGregor. “These Are The U.S. Companies Offering Abortion-Related Benefits.” Forbes. May 7, 2022.)
“I think it really comes down to equal access to care. In order to safeguard employees and make sure that they can get the healthcare that they need, no matter what state they live in, we need a benefit like this,” Miriam Warren, Yelp’s Chief Diversity Officer told Reuters.
(Doyinsola Oladipo and Arriana McLymore. “Yelp, other companies take stance on abortion rights with travel benefit.” Reuters. May 06, 2022.)
The Reality
Like so many other social and political issues these days, the right to have an abortion has no middle ground. Of course, the issue is loaded with emotional impact and ethical impact. The truth of the matter is that everyone knows that when Roe v. Wade is overturned, women will still seek abortions and the right to their own bodies.
The Supreme Court decision defies public-opinion surveys show that workers would welcome their employers’ help. Americans favor legislation that would legalize abortion nationwide by a nearly 20-point margin; a recent Morning Consult poll found that by a two-to-one margin, employed adults would prefer to live in a state where abortion is legal; and according to data released last fall, some two-thirds of college-educated workers have said they would not move to a state with extreme abortion restrictions.
(Maggie McGrath and Jena McGregor. “These Are The U.S. Companies Offering Abortion-Related Benefits.” Forbes. May 7, 2022.)
Being denied an abortion can endanger a woman’s health in the short-term, but now, research suggests she may continue to suffer years after childbirth. In a new study by UC San Francisco researchers, women who were denied abortions reported higher rates of joint pain, persistent headaches and migraines, and poorer overall health five years later, compared to women able to obtain abortions.
“The findings from the study are particularly relevant today, as they highlight some of the consequences if we continue to restrict women’s access to a wanted abortion,” said Lauren Ralph, MPH, PhD, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences and first author of the paper published June 11, 2019, in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
(Lauren J. Ralph, PhD, Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, MD, Daniel Grossman, MD, and Diana Greene Foster, PhD. “Self-reported Physical Health of Women Who Did and Did Not Terminate Pregnancy After Seeking Abortion Services.” Annals of Internal Medicine. June 11, 2019.)
Another landmark study has made great progress in measuring the impact of abortion access. To address the methodological limitations in previous studies, researcher Diana Greene Foster, a professor in the department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, designed a novel approach. Her team recruited women at abortion clinics, and compared outcomes among those who were just over the gestational limit and were denied an abortion with those who were just under the limit and had the procedure.
Foster called the investigation the Turnaway Study, a reference to clinics turning some people away because they are too far along in their pregnancy. Its results have been described in 50 scientific papers, almost all of which were published in peer-reviewed journals from 2012 to 2020. And to date, the study is one of the most comprehensive in the field.
(“Introduction to the Turnaway Study.” https://www.ansirh.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/turnawaystudyannotatedbibliography.pdf . Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health. ANSIR. March 2020.)
From 2008 to 2010 the study recruited nearly 1,000 women seeking abortions at 30 facilities in 21 states. Afterward the participants were interviewed by phone every six months for a span of five years. (While transgender men and nonbinary people also experience pregnancy and seek abortions, the Turnaway Study focused specifically on pregnant women.) The study found that, compared with women who received an abortion, those who wanted the procedure but were denied it fared worse in numerous aspects of their life, including financial situation, education, and physical and mental health.
One of the key questions that Foster was looking to answer when she designed the Turnaway Study was: Does abortion hurt women? The investigation found that, in the long term, more women who gave birth (27 percent) reported fair or poor physical health, compared with women who had an abortion (20 percent for a first-trimester abortion and 21 percent for second-trimester one). “The biggest differences we saw, besides the socioeconomic differences, are in physical health,” Foster says. “That’s consistent with the medical literature that shows that carrying a pregnancy to term—the many months of continued pregnancy and childbirth—are associated with much greater risk than having an abortion, even a later abortion.”
(Mariana Lenharo. “Being Denied an Abortion Has Lasting Impacts on Health and Finances.” Scientific American. December 22, 2021.)
The Turnaway Study found that 95% of women report that having the abortion was the right decision for them over five years after the procedure.
In addition, women denied abortion are:
More likely to experience serious complications from the end of pregnancy including eclampsia and death
More likely to stay tethered to abusive partners
More likely to suffer anxiety and loss of self-esteem in the short term after being denied abortion
Less likely to have aspirational life plans for the coming year
More likely to experience poor physical health for years after the pregnancy, including chronic pain and gestational hypertension
The study also finds that being denied abortion has serious implications for the children born of unwanted pregnancy, as well as for the existing children in the family
The Final Word
Access to abortion is an important right for women because denial may negatively affect their physical and mental health. Large companies are stepping up to insure their employees that they care and will provide much-needed help in this access.
The issue of abortion is so complicated. One can oversimplify a stance with only emotions and attempt to legislate a single view of ethics. However, health is the primary concern that governs the right for a woman's choice. Overturning Roe v. Wade will most certainly have negative effects in its undue restrictions.
The tide of businesses that is coming to the aid of female employees demonstrates an undeniable fact – women still struggle in their quest for equality, and some corporations, more than others, offer vital support for necessary change.
If pro-life advocates are successful in giving virtual sovereignty to the fetus, ruling out abortion regardless of the circumstances of the pregnancy or the well-being of the mother, so many problems will intensify – among them refusing aid for women below the poverty line and for their children, both born and unborn.
I'll end with this hypothetical from Judith Jarvis Thomson in “A Defense of Abortion,” a 1971 essay widely regarded as a classic in contemporary American philosophy.
It began with an insight into the anti-abortion position. “Opponents of abortion commonly spend most of their time establishing that the fetus is a person, and hardly any time explaining the step from there to the impermissibility of abortion,” she wrote. For the sake of argument, she granted that fetuses are people.
“Now let me ask you to imagine this,” she continued. You wake up one morning and find yourself back-to-back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help.
“They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. (If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but) in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.
“Is it morally incumbent on you to remain hooked up to the violinist for nine months, at the end of which he will have recovered?”
“If you do allow him to go on using your kidneys, this is a kindness on your part, and not something he can claim from you as his due,” Professor Thomson wrote. She regarded pregnancy similarly, and considered abortion akin to declining to aid someone – as one might with the violinist – rather than murder.
“She’s using the violinist case to say that a certain general principle is false, and the general principle is something like: A right to life always trumps a right to decide what happens in and to your own body,” said Elizabeth Harman, a philosophy professor at Princeton who specializes in the ethics of abortion.
(Alex Traub. “Judith Jarvis Thomson, Philosopher Who Defended Abortion, Dies at 91.” The New York Times. December 03, 2020.)
The conclusion Thomson draws from this analogy is “that having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right (1) to be given the use of, or (2) a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body – even if one needs it for life itself. The right to life isn’t as clear of an argument as opponents of abortion would like it to be or believe it is. The hypothetical brings up another problem with the right to life argument. Just because something ought to happen a certain way doesn’t necessarily create a right to it.
The conclusion that is drawn from this scenario is that your own right to life gives you the moral right to “unplug” yourself if your life is threatened. Equally, if there is a risk of the mother dying, she has a right to end the pregnancy in order to save herself. It cannot be considered murder to kill someone in order to save yourself.
(Judith Jarvis Thomson. “In Defense of Abortion” p 329. 1971.)
I ask right-to-life advocates to consider Thomson's view. I wonder if they would still support a no-compromise position. How does the Supreme Court reflect a true interest in womcn's rights and their health with the recent Roe v. Wade decision? Besides, the intent of any moral argument is a disaster. Abortion will continue despite obstacles.
References
A list of references for those truly interested in seeking answers to the need for a woman's choice:
1. Foster DG, Ralph LJ, Biggs MA, Gerdts C, Roberts SCM, Glymour MA. Socioeconomic outcomes of women who receive and women who are denied wanted abortions. March 2018. American Journal of Public Health, 108(3):407-413.
2. Miller S, Wherry LR, Foster DG. The Economic consequences of being denied an abortion. January 2020. The National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper No. 26662.
3. Roberts SCM, Biggs MA, Chibber KS, Gould H, Rocca CH, Foster DG. Risk of violence from the man involved in the pregnancy after receiving or being denied an abortion. September 2014. BMC Medicine, 12:144.
4. Upadhyay UD, Biggs MA, Foster DG. The effect of abortion on having and achieving aspirational one-year plans. November 2015. BMC Women’s Health, 15:102.
5. Upadhyay UD, Angel Aztlan-James E, Rocca CH, Foster DG. Intended pregnancy after receiving vs being denied a wanted abortion. September 2018. Contraception, 99(1):42-47.
6. Foster DG, Raifman SE, Gipson JD, Rocca CH, Biggs MA. Effects of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term on women’s existing children. October 2018. The Journal of Pediatrics, 205:183-189.e1.
7. Foster DG, Biggs MA, Raifman S, Gipson JD, Kimport K, Rocca CH. Comparison of health, development, maternal bonding, and poverty among children born after denial of abortion vs after pregnancies subsequent to an abortion. September 2018. JAMA Pediatrics, 172(11):1053-1060.
8. Gerdts C, Dobkin L, Foster DG, Schwarz EB. Side effects, physical health consequences, and mortality associated with abortion and birth after an unwanted pregnancy. November 2015. Women’s Health Issues, 26(1):55-59.
9. Ralph LJ, Schwarz EB, Grossman D, Foster DG. Self-reported physical health of women who did and did not terminate pregnancy after seeking abortion services: A cohort study. August 2019. Annals of Internal Medicine, 171(4):238-247.
No comments:
Post a Comment