Almost as soon as it became clear the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, a number of the United States’ largest corporations began to announce they would pay for employees and their dependents in states that would lose abortion access to travel and obtain one. Starbucks stepped up. Amazon. Citigroup, too. That number increased last week, after the decision was announced, with companies including Bank of America and Dick’s Sporting Goods announcing they would join others already offering the benefit.
It’s a veritable cavalcade of companies supporting reproductive rights, and yes, it’s well meant. But there’s less here than meets the eye, and it’s a reminder of why corporate generosity is not an adequate substitute for a government guarantee of rights.
First, many of these very same companies gave serious money to the political action committees and politicians who brought us to this pass. According to data compiled by the Center for Political Accountability, Citigroup gave $75,000 last year to the Republican State Leadership Committee, and the same sum in 2020 to the Republican Attorneys General Association, the group that’s considered to be one of the masterminds of the legal strategy that did away with the right to an abortion. Other companies that gave money to these two groups: Amazon, Bank of America, Lyft and Uber.
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