As some of the nation’s largest employers vow to pay their employees to travel out of state for abortions, an insurance company in Texas went viral on social media for promising to cover employees’ expenses related to having a child.
Buffer Insurance, a Dallas-Fort Worth area company, responded to the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision with a pro-life message, pledging to adjust its benefits policies to better support employees to be new parents.
Specifically, the company said it would provide its female employees with paid maternity and paternity leave, as well as pay for the medical costs of giving birth to or adopting a baby.
“Secular companies are paying the travel costs for employees to abort babies out-of-state,” Buffer wrote in a June 27 Facebook post. “Today we are announcing that Buffer will pay the costs for our employees who birth babies.”
It is also offering such benefits to its insurance clients.
“Employers: If you’d like to learn how you can provide these benefits to your employees, let us know. We have ready-to-use policies you can add to your employee handbooks,” it added.
Paying Employees to Get Out-of-State Abortions
The move comes as a growing list of high-profile companies, including Walt Disney Company, Meta, Comcast, Condé Nast, Warner Bros., JPMorgan Chase, and Johnson & Johnson, said they will pay their employees who have to travel to another state to get an abortion in the aftermath of the end of Roe.
On June 24, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority overruled Roe, which legalized abortion at a national level. The new decision doesn’t outlaw abortion but instead hands the question of abortion access back to individual states.
By Bill Pan
