Comment on this story
comment
Walmart is expanding its employee health care plans to cover more situations in which its employees could request an abortion, making the country’s largest private employer the latest company to emerge after Roe v. Wade offers improved access to reproductive health services.
Arkansas-headquartered Walmart, which employs 1.6 million workers in the United States, said it would cover abortions “when there is a health risk to the mother, rape or incest.” It also pays for the intervention in the event of miscarriage, poor fetal viability, or ectopic pregnancy when a fetus implants outside the uterus. The company provides “travel assistance” to employees and family members when they need access to a healthcare service covered by Walmart’s insurance plan but there is no viable provider within 100 miles of their location.
Walmart’s top hiring chief said in an internal memo that the new benefits will take effect immediately.
A trigger ban on abortions — except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger — went into effect in Arkansas after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe, which found a fundamental right to the procedure. About 53 percent of Walmart employees in the United States are women. It operates more than 2,000 stores in states that have either banned abortion or imposed near-total restrictions on the procedure.
Last year, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) signed the trigger ban into law, though he said earlier this month he supports exceptions for rape and incest. There was no immediate response from senior GOP leaders in Arkansas to Walmart’s move, although the move was criticized by some anti-abortion activists.
Other companies that have offered assistance to employees seeking abortions include Disney, which employs about 80,000 workers in Florida, a state with a near-total ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Dick’s Sporting Goods has announced it will reimburse employees up to $4,000 in travel expenses to the nearest place where abortion is legal. Lyft and JPMorgan, as well as Walmart competitors Target and CVS, have taken similar moves.
Walmart and the Walton family — the descendants of the company’s founder and owners of a large stake in the retailer — have a history of supporting conservative causes and politicians. Walmart has donated two to three times as much to the GOP as the Democratic Party in many election cycles prior to 2008, according to the Open Secrets Campaign Funding Observatory.
Walgreens, CVS and Walmart pay $650 million in opioid lawsuit
In recent years, the retail giant and the Walton family have expanded their contributions to include liberal politicians and moderate Republicans. In 2020, Walmart gave comparable amounts to Republican and Democratic politicians; That year, the family contributed more to Democratic congressional candidates.
This year’s donations to GOP politicians from individual family members include $17,400 to Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who supports abortion rights and recently finished ahead of a candidate backed by former President Donald Trump in a Senate primary. They also gave $250,000 to the Lincoln Project, a Republican anti-Trump group.
Walmart was one of dozens of companies that stopped making donations to lawmakers who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 victory following the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.