Recognition…Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Yelp is expected to announce Tuesday that it will cover the costs of its employees and their spouses who have to travel abroad to have an abortion, becoming the latest company to respond to a Texas law banning the procedure after about six weeks Pregnancy prohibited.
The online search and review platform, based in San Francisco and with more than 4,000 employees, employs just over 200 in Texas, but the benefit extends to employees in other states who may be affected by “current or future actions affecting the Restrict access to reproductive health care,” a company representative said.
Last month, Citigroup became the first major bank to announce it will cover travel expenses for employees affected by the law in Texas, where it employs more than 8,000 people. Other companies that have announced policies to mitigate the law’s impact include Uber and Lyft, which have offered to pay legal fees for Texas drivers who could be sued for taking someone to an abortion clinic.
A Texas lawmaker warned Citigroup that he would introduce a bill to prevent the bank from underwriting municipal bonds in the state unless it lifted its expense policy. While “Backlash is getting a lot more attention,” Yelp isn’t worried about how its program, which launches next month, will be received, said Miriam Warren, the company’s chief diversity officer. She and other executives have received many personal notes thanking Yelp for taking a stand on abortion, she said.
The move, which comes as companies compete for talent in a tight labor pool, will help Yelp maintain a more diverse and inclusive workforce, Ms. Warren said. “We want to be able to recruit and retain employees wherever they live,” she said.
“The ability to control your reproductive health and whether or when you want to expand your family is absolutely fundamental to being able to thrive in the workplace,” she added.
Questions about access to abortion or vaccination requirements would have previously been considered outside the purview of a corporate leader. However, executives increasingly feel compelled to take a stand on such contentious issues because they are often of great importance to their employees and customers.
“I think the real question for these companies is going to be, where do you want to be located?” said Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College in Vermont who has tracked the economic impact of reproductive health interventions. “You are in a place where women have exceedingly limited reproductive rights? Will you be able to recruit women to get there?”
Recognition…Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Yelp’s travel benefit is part of its longer-term abortion access efforts. In 2018, the company said it would do more to ensure Yelp users clearly understand the difference between abortion clinics and “crisis pregnancy centers,” which aim to discourage people from having an abortion.
“Our User Operations team manually screened more than 2,000 companies and clinics to ensure accurate categorization,” Yelp said in a statement. When Texas passed its abortion law last year, the company also pledged to match employee donations to organizations fighting the law.
Under the new policy, Yelp employees can submit receipts for travel expenses directly to their health plan, Ms. Warren said. “So no one else at Yelp will ever know who is accessing it, or how, or when, and it’s going to be a refund that comes straight through the insurance provider,” she said.
The median earnings on Yelp was $92,000 in 2020, according to government records, and companies where employees earn higher wages are often the most opposed to legal abortion restrictions. However, these restrictions disproportionately affect low-income women who cannot afford the extra travel or the days off to travel, Professor Myers said.
“Wealthy women and women with higher education are not the ones who cannot travel,” she said. “These women will find a way to get to a place where it’s still legal.”
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