Netflix, Disney, and more pledge to cover travel costs for employees' out-of-state abortions

Disney, Netflix, and several other major media companies have issued statements this afternoon, confirming that their benefits policy will cover travel costs for employees who need to travel to seek abortions outside their home states after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade today.

Netflix, for instance, has reiterated a $10,000 lifetime allowance “for full-time U.S. employees and their dependents who need to travel for cancer treatment, transplants, gender affirming care, or abortion—through our U.S. health plans.” That’s in line with policies at other companies, which have pledged travel costs for employees who need to travel out of a state where the ghouls are already frothing at the mouth to get off on controlling people’s bodies by overturning abortion rights state legislators have either already imposed harsh controls on reproductive rights, or intend to.

Per Variety, other companies affirming their coverage of travel benefits include Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros. Discovery, Meta, Comcast, and several other media conglomerates. Variety also notes that the Sundance Film Festival, which is deeply connected to Utah—one of several states expected to step up its systemic oppression of people with uteruses pass anti-abortion laws in the coming weeks or months—has already updated its benefits package to include travel funds.

The most immediately affected employees will, presumably, be those living in Texas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Louisiana, and Kentucky, where “trigger laws” were already in place to ban abortion the minute the Supreme Court lurched into ungainly, scabrous life to try to turn back the clock on American rights by 60 years handed down the decision it’s been expected to issue for two months now. There’s also the whole question of whether states, emboldened by today’s decision, might move forward with ideas they’ve been floating to punish companies that help residents seeking abortions travel out of states where they’re illegal; Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested, in his consenting opinion today, that such laws would be rendered unconstitutional because they’d impinge on American’s right to interstate travel, but honestly: That guy can go fuck himself can go fuck himself.