Tesla To Pay Travel Costs For Employees' Out-Of-State Abortions: Report

Tesla TSLA has quietly announced it will pay the transportation expenses for employees that may need to travel out of state to have an abortion.

What Happened: The New York Times reported the company’s newly published 2021 Impact Report included a passage that guaranteed the company would provide “travel and lodging support for those who may need to seek healthcare services that are unavailable in their home state.”

While the verbiage is opaque, it is not difficult to decipher “healthcare services that are unavailable in their home state” as a reference to abortion access in states where legislators have been working to limit access as much as possible. Texas has some of the most onerous state-level restrictions on abortion access, where the procedure is banned after six weeks of pregnancy.

According to a report in The Texas Tribune, since the state’s anti-abortion law went into effect “pregnant Texans have flooded clinics in neighboring states and found ways to order abortion-inducing medication online, while others have carried unwanted pregnancies to term. Clinics have pivoted to helping shuttle people out of state, and abortion funds have struggled to keep up with the need.”

Tesla relocated its headquarters to Austin, the Texas state capital, last December.

See Also: PR Agency Tells Blue-Chip Clients Like AT&T, Coca-Cola, Netflix And More To Avoid Media Inquiries On Abortion Debate

Why It Matters: Abortion access has gained renewed attention earlier this week when a draft version of a possible U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling was leaked to the media.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has not offered any comment on the Roe v. Wade issue or on the Texas anti-abortion law. Ironically, Musk relocated his company and his residence from California to Texas after complaining about state-level interference in people’s lives in 2020 when he dubbed the COVID lockdown procedures “fascist” and reopened his Tesla factory in Fremont, California, in May 2020 in violation of an Alameda County health order prohibiting the facility from operating.

Photo: Thomas Hawk / Flickr Creative Commons