The Impact of State Abortion Bans on HR Policies
Episode 477 | Author: Emilie Aries
The overturning of Roe v. Wade is impacting human resources in a big way.
When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, federal protections for abortion ceased, and states were free to make independent decisions about this essential healthcare issue. We’ve now had more than a year and a half to watch how these states—whose new laws range from full allowance to complete bans and even criminal charges for those who circumvent them—are navigating the impacts of this change and how employers across the country are or are planning to deal with them.
These adjustments inevitably add a new layer to HR policies, which can’t avoid the consequences of how these laws impact women and their careers—both in states with bans and those without. In this episode, I examine a few of the considerations being made and discussed in regard to women’s rights and safety and the impact on organizations as a whole.
Travel benefits—a perk in poor taste
When survey results came in following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, only 5% of HR professionals said their workplaces planned to provide support for workers who required out-of-state abortion care due to their own state’s new policies. This isn’t too surprising considering the rocky legal terrain awaiting any organization that might be seen helping their employees circumvent state law.
A few notable employers—such as Nordstrom and Disney—did announce that they would pay for these travel expenses. At first glance, this might seem altruistic, but as Ali Griswold wrote in a June 2022 article, “turning access to basic lifesaving women's health care into a corporate perk to attract and retain talent is the sort of perverse and dystopian outcome you’d only encounter in a country like the U.S.”
Regardless of how you read a move like this, we can’t pretend it isn’t hugely problematic and not a long-term or widespread solution.
Other approaches to travel accommodations
However, an update to travel policies is certainly something to think about. Take travel for work, for example. While I was pregnant, I refused to accept keynote-speaking offers in states with abortion bans, just in case, while I was there, something went wrong in my pregnancy that required an abortion to save my life.
Enacting any abortion-based travel policy requires a pregnant person to disclose to their employer that they are expecting, even if it is early in the pregnancy or if this disclosure could impact their job prospects. Never mind if someone experiences recurrent miscarriages, as I did. Are they expected to disclose every pregnancy during a traumatic time in order to avoid visiting states that could ultimately endanger their lives?
So, what is the solution? We need to find a way to make workplace travel policies flexible so that if someone—regardless of their pregnancy status—has a concern about traveling to a certain state, they can be accommodated without having to navigate an invasive HR meeting or form.
Another major aspect of all this is the impact these laws stand to have on tourism and entertainment industries in states with abortion bans—already, in a 2023 survey, 43% of one conference organizer’s clientele stated that the laws would affect where they chose to host conferences.
It will be interesting to see what future research shows about the impact of fewer conferences and other events in states with abortion bans, particularly for industries like education—of which women make up the majority of the workforce—and health care.
The effect on recruiting
Speaking of corporate perks, the impact of abortion bans on recruitment across the country is another fascinating component in this conversation.
In August 2022, a survey of 1000 people found that, already, one-third of job seekers were saying they would not apply to jobs in states with abortion bans, and one-quarter of job seekers currently living in states with bans were applying to jobs in regions where abortion was legal.
Additionally, when the Texas abortion ban was imminent in 2021, a national survey conducted by Perry Undem found that two-thirds of the white-collar knowledge workers surveyed would not take a job in that state due to the ban. Further, half of those surveyed said they would consider leaving their own state if a ban was passed. Interestingly, 40% of men confirmed they, too, would refuse jobs in states with abortion bans, telling us that these laws affect men’s career decisions almost as much as women’s.
Considering all this, and the many other ramifications of abortion bans—those we have already seen and those we know are coming—I’d love to hear your perspective. How are these considerations (or a lack of them) affecting your workplace? How is the current climate changing how you think about where you travel, live, and apply for jobs? Get in touch through our Courage Community on Facebook or join us in our group on LinkedIn to share your thoughts. If you’d like to weigh in privately, email me directly at emilie@bossedup.org.
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
SHRM: Companies Are Announcing Abortion-Travel Benefits Following Dobbs Decision
SHRM: Companies Announcing Abortion Travel Benefits Following Dobbs Decision
Northstar: How the Events Industry Is Responding to State Abortion Bans
Perry Undem: What Does "Top Talent" Think About Working in States that Ban Abortion?
Stop Congratulating Companies for Making Abortion a Corporate 'Perk' by Ali Griswold
Episode 357, How to Talk About Abortion at Work
Find out how you can TAKE ACTION on this and other topics affecting women in the workplace:
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EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 477. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today I want to talk about the fallout that's happening, particularly in HR departments, when it comes to how our organizations are adapting to a post Roe v. Wade world.
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So, as you may already be familiar with, the Dobbs decision, back in 2022 really eliminated a national right and protection for access to abortion, which has meant that now in the United States, we have really different landscapes, state by state. Some states you can easily access an abortion, some states you very much cannot. And you're even under threat of criminal charges for seeking out abortion care.
Now, I could get into the politics and the economics of how negatively this impacts women and our careers, but I feel like we already know that. What's interesting to me over the past few years, since this abortion landscape has changed so much, is how the h*** businesses are navigating the very real consequences that this now has for women in the workplace, particularly the issues that it creates for HR departments, who have to think about the impact that these kinds of decisions have on their workforce, on over 50% of the workforce, which is made up of women and people who can get pregnant and who might need reproductive health care, including and up to abortion care.
So the first thing we started to see right after the fall of Roe v. Wade was a big discussion around travel benefits that companies could provide for getting their workers out of a state that has no abortion care and into a place where they could seek support. Very tricky terrain legally, very gray legal areas. And in fact, as it turns out, it's a very rare benefit. As of a study from early June 2022 done by SHRM Research that surveyed over 1000 HR professionals, only 5% of respondents said that their organizations plan to provide travel expense benefits, including things like gasoline, airfare, and hotels outside of a health savings account to help employees access abortion and reproductive services that were no longer accessible in their state.
And that doesn't surprise me because that seems like putting the company in some legal risk and liability. You know, as some articles mentioned that I was reading. They were like, where exactly do you request that in the HRIs system? You know, like, is this a benefit that comes with a paper trail that can then be used against you if you are under investigation for abortion in your state? So it just puts things in a weird, weird position for HR professionals. That said, there were pretty notable employers, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, Nordstrom's, Disney, and a range of other businesses that came out strongly upon the fall of Roe v. Wade committing to paying for travel expenses for an abortion.
I found this pretty interesting. Writer Ali Griswold wrote in her substack quote, it should go without saying that turning access to basic, life saving women's health care into a corporate perk to attract and retain talent, is the sort of perverse and dystopian outcome you'd only encounter in a country like the US. And that really is how I feel about abortion access and travel benefits as a corporate perk for attracting and retaining talent, it's also just not a solution. It's not widespread. It's only, you know, a tiny amount of employers who are doing this. But it is one way that your employer can make a stand. I think most employers are not comfortable or courageous enough to make that kind of a stand because of its complicated nature.
So what else can be done? Another arena that I've started to hear conversations around among my HR friends, but I'm not really seeing a ton of guidance, literature, or action on when it comes to the usual places like SHRM doesn't have anything on this that I've been able to find, is thinking about updating workplace travel policies. This came to mind for me right away as a pregnant person right now in my third trimester, recording this podcast, who, as a speaker who speaks at conferences. Like, as soon as the Dobbs decision came through, I was done agreeing to keynote in Texas and Florida and any other state that has restrictive abortion bans, not because I anticipated getting an abortion, necessarily, but because as a pregnant person, you just never know if your pregnancy is going to get complicated and you're going to need that kind of care to save your life. Like, I am not going to be the one who's alone on a business trip in Florida, finding myself in a hospital, realizing my pregnancy is an ectopic pregnancy, and being refused life saving care.
And that is a position that so many women are now put in. If you're just asked to travel for work, it's not just keynote speakers who have to deal with this, right? It's like, if your workplace says, hey, I need you to do a client meeting in Texas, can you get there from your home state of Colorado? Like, that puts people in a very precarious position. What if my employer doesn't even know that I'm pregnant? How do I refuse that request, right? Without having to disclose my pregnancy status, which can then be used against me.
Or like me, if you're navigating recurrent miscarriage do I really want to tell my employer every time I'm pregnant? Because I've been pregnant like four different times in the past year and a half. And like, that just puts me in a position where I'd have to share so much more about my health status than I would want to, necessarily, with my employer.
So how do we make workplace travel policies flexible, so that if people have concerns about traveling to certain places because of their legal landscape and the liability that puts them in from a personal health and safety standpoint, how can we make our travel policies more accommodating without being invasive? And it was interesting. I haven't really found good guidance on this. So if any of you have examples from how your workplace is adjusting your travel policy, I would love to hear it.
What I did stumble across is the events industry is really grappling with this, and I've done a lot of work with the events industry. As someone who speaks at conferences, I came across an interesting study done by the North Star Meetings Group, a group that helps organize conferences for their clients. And after the Dobbs decision, they said nearly 30% of their clients said that abortion laws have already affected recent decisions that their clients are making on where to host their conferences. And 43% say, yeah, those abortion laws will affect our future site selection decisions as well. So that's really interesting. I just wonder if the conference industry is like, there are so many conferences that happen in Texas. I've been to San Antonio more times in the past few years for conferences than pretty much anywhere else. I wonder if they're suffering.
I wonder if their tourism boards are suffering as a result of the decisions that conference organizers, like big conferences are making around where to host their annual conferences, because that is, let me tell you, that says a lot about what you value, especially for industries that are disproportionately made up of women. I'm looking at education, higher ed. I mean, you cannot put a whole bunch of pregnant people in the position of, I'm not coming to our annual conference because I don't feel safe traveling there. It's just not good for business, it's not good for your conference.
Similarly, I've seen press from the scientific community that says, like, look, as people who believe in science and evidence and healthcare, we're not hosting conferences in places that are passing laws contrary to what health providers would say, or taking rights away from women and their health providers who are making decisions. So I do think that's an arena for HR leadership to get more involved, to be more thoughtful, and for every one of us listening to get curious. Find out what your travel policy is at work before you need to know, especially if you're thinking about getting pregnant in the coming years.
And then the final aspect of how these abortion bans are really negatively impacting our workplaces and frankly, just making life for HR people harder than it needs to be is when it comes to recruiting. You know, it's yet to be seen necessarily, how many people will actually start rejecting job offers in states that have strict abortion bans. But at least when it comes to surveys asking people about their opinions and about their intentions, one in three job seekers say that they won't even apply to a job in a state with an abortion ban. That's according to a resume builder survey of 1000 people done back in August. And they found that one in four job seekers currently living in a state with restrictive abortion ban site is currently applying to jobs only where abortion is legal. That's pretty interesting when it comes to this very challenging labor market that so many employers find ourselves in a talent shortage, that, that is troubling from a recruiting standpoint.
There's also an interesting poll done by Perry Undem on top talent. They were specifically looking at college degree holding, like, white collar knowledge workers, and they found that two thirds of them said that the Texas abortion ban would discourage them from taking a job in that state. Half of respondents said they would consider leaving their own state if lawmakers passed such a ban. Notably, 40% of men in Florida said they would not apply for a job in a state with an abortion ban. So this is impacting men's career decisions almost as much as it's impacting women's, which makes a lot of sense. You know, there's a great article that profiled people who've turned down jobs in states with abortion bans. And one of the folks profiled was a dad who was expecting a daughter and he wanted to move back to his home state of Texas. And he said, I can't raise my daughter there like this. Just does not seem like a place where she would be safe, where her rights would be under attack.
So, I don't know. I'm just intrigued to see how businesses actually respond and how HR departments particularly actually respond to these really restrictive legal landscapes that women now find ourselves in.
So let me know what's happening in your neck of the woods. How is recruiting travel policies or travel benefits changed in your workplace since the overturning of Roe v. Wade? What have these questions spurred for you? Are you someone who, like me, has been thinking now about where you'd feel comfortable traveling for work,
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where you'd feel comfortable living or applying to jobs. Let's keep the conversation going, as always, in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook, or in the Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn. And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
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