Workforce & Economic Impacts
Worker well-being is central to businesses’ ability to grow their competitiveness, innovate within their industry, and meet the needs of stakeholders, including shareholders.
The Business Case for Abortion Access
We regularly hear from businesses that their workforce is anxious about the impact of abortion bans and want to see their employers take meaningful steps to ensure access to reproductive healthcare for themselves and their families.
Without federal legislation for protection, there has been a rapidly changing landscape of state policies restricting worker access to seek the reproductive healthcare and services they need. This is especially pressing for multi-state corporations as they must ensure that their workforce can live without fear for their family’s safety, security, and prevent loss of opportunities.
Abortion bans have led to nearly 1 in 5 patients traveling out of state for abortion care. Recent restrictions and laws criminalizing travel across states and receiving abortion medication by mail attempts to punish employers who help their workers access care exacerbate the issue making it difficult for employers to prevent widespread harm. Government overreach, judicial interference, diminishing data privacy, and threats to interstate commerce create significant liability for corporate America.
Where You Do Business Matters
Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive health care affects business efforts to build diverse and inclusive workforces, recruit top talent across states, and ensure the well-being of communities and the economy.
Hidden Value:
The Business Case For Reproductive Health
The Business Case for Reproductive Health illuminates the link between access to comprehensive reproductive health care and business performance.
In the year following the Dobbs decision, 26.1 million women of reproductive age are living under jurisdiction that has eliminated or severely restricted abortion access – a form of healthcare that one in four women may need over the course of their careers according to Guttmacher.
Employer Benefit Trends
Many employers have been able to expand the benefits provided to employees, but they may be subject to challenge or nullified state legislation. Only Congress can create a 50-state solution, putting an end to uncertainty and unnecessary red tape across state lines.
A KFF survey of employer health benefits shows that 28% of large U.S. companies have limited or no access to abortion under company health insurance.
Mercer explores gaps and opportunities in employer support for women’s health in 2022, as well as recommendations for enhancements in 2023 and beyond.
In January 2023, the Health and Human Services department of the Biden/Harris administration released a report indicating their commitment to keeping abortion accessible. In 2022, they reaffirmed protections for providers in Medicare-participating emergency departments to perform life-saving abortion services as stabilizing care in emergencies. They also called on states to apply for modifications in their Medicare packages to provide increased access to reproductive health care.
Federally, abortions are not covered for those on Medicaid unless one’s life is endangered. But six states require nearly all private insurance plans to cover abortion, and sixteen states use their own funds to ensure that people enrolled in Medicaid have access to abortion. (NWLC, 2021)
This interactive resource from the ACLU allows you to select your state and read about insurance policies there.
Abortion is not a divisive issue. Recent data affirms broad national support for abortion access with 70% of women in the United States supporting the right to abortion, regardless of political affiliation.
Business Risk
Medical Privacy, Data, and Interstate Travel are under fire; this has far-reaching implications.
Office and event site selection is complicated by state bans.
Tracking movement via data collection and storing this information in databases creates vulnerabilities regarding safeguarding worker privacy as the data can be potentially used in criminal proceedings.
Amnesty International’s report, “Obstacles to Autonomy: Post-Roe Removal of Abortion Information Online,” highlights how restrictive abortion policies have negative implications for data privacy and censorship more broadly.
Business Travel is getting complicated — HR leaders are quietly working to address a growing set of risks to employees and businesses like hotels examine their data collection policies and risk.
Travel Bans are another version of attacks on privacy to monitor, especially if your workers live in or travel to states where they, or their families, may be placed in harm’s way.
Disproportionate Impact on Workers
Low-income workers are disproportionately impacted as they are often benefits-ineligible. Before the Dobbs decision was released, economists provided clear evidence that overturning Roe would prevent large numbers of women experiencing unintended pregnancies—many of whom are low-income and financially vulnerable mothers—from obtaining desired abortions.
Talent Pipelines & Workforce Mobility
CNBC includes access to reproductive healthcare as a metric for tracking the quality of life in different states. The states identified as the worst to live and work in all have restrictive abortion policies, highlighting the effects that near and total abortion bans have on the workforce.
Abortion bans, low wages, and public underinvestment are interconnected economic policy tools to disempower and control workers
By a margin of 2:1, workers prefer to live in a state where abortion is legal and accessible rather than illegal and inaccessible.
Additionally, by a margin of 10:1, workers prefer to live in a state where paid family and medical leave is available.
Most adults (54%) who were offered a professional opportunity with state relocation in the past year (2024) say they considered social policies in their decision to accept or decline the role.
Nearly half of working adults say they are only open to moving to abortion friendly states.
Nearly two thirds of young Americans report that legal access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion access, informs where they choose to live.
Students are considering abortion access as they choose where to go to college and one-third of parents say they would not send their child to college in a state where abortion is illegal.
Workers under age 40 agree that access to abortion is a workplace issue.
44% of US women said they would leave their current job if their employer’s views on reproductive rights didn’t align with their own. That number jumped to 56% for millennial women, who are the largest generational cohort in the workforce.
Recent research from Lean In indicates that more senior employees and managers are more likely to consider switching jobs in light of the overturn of Roe, and women and men of color are about twice as likely to consider switching jobs as white men and women.
Companies that support abortion access saw an 8% uptick in job applications.
According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, economic losses from increased reproductive care restrictions, including labor force impact and earnings, cost the economy an estimated $172 billion annually (up from $146 billion)
Broader Healthcare Impacts
Every state with abortion bans saw a decrease in OB-GYN residency applications, which is effectively reshaping the medical workforce. The post-Roe collateral damage continues to destabilize the economy and harm workforce readiness, and doctors warn of a collapsing medical system in those states.
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Large shares also believe that the Dobbs decision has worsened pregnancy-related mortality (64%), racial and ethnic inequities in maternal health (70%) and the ability to attract new OBGYNs to the field (55%).
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76% of respondents in a survey of more than 2,000 current and future physicians say they would not even apply to work or train in states with abortion restrictions.
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A recent study found that women in states with abortion bans are nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after giving birth.
The states that severely limit abortion (or are poised to) already tend to have limited access to health care, worse healthcare outcomes, and fewer safety net programs in place for mothers and children. These bans result in higher maternal mortality rates and further compound racial disparities in maternal health.
States with abortion restrictions had a 16% increased infant mortality rate.
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When clinics that provide abortions close their doors, all the other services offered there also shut down, including regular exams, breast cancer screenings, and contraception.
Florida’s Abortion Ban Underscores Clinics’ Fights for Sites
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34% of women aged 18-39 said they or someone they know personally has “decided not to get pregnant due to concerns about managing pregnancy-related medical emergencies.”
More than half of young women are making plans about where to live based on whether abortion is accessible in a state. As of January 2023, 53% say their lives have already been impacted by bans, 44% have considered moving or are making plans to move to a state where abortion is protected, and 10% have already declined a job in a state where abortions are banned.
Young women are planning their lives around state abortion laws
How Abortion Bans Will Stifle Health Care Innovation (Harvard Business Review): Investment in tools, products, and services related to women’s health has exploded over the past decade. The overturn of Roe v. Wade undermines critical areas of research, innovation, and progress toward more equitable health care outcomes.