Retail giant Walmart is expanding travel and abortion coverage for its US employees, effective immediately.
According to CNBC, citing an internal memo sent to employees, Walmart's health-care plans will now cover abortion "when there is a health risk to the mother, rape or incest, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage or lack of fetal viability."
Employees and their family members who are insured through Walmart will also have travel costs covered, if they cannot access a legal abortion within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of their location, according to the email, which was sent by Walmart's chief people officer, Donna Morris.
Walmart is the country's largest private employer with about 1.6 million employees.
The update comes about two months after the historic Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, which established a woman's constitutional right to have an abortion for nearly fifty years.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito noted that the US Constitution makes no reference to abortion and argues no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Several other big companies including Walt Disney, Netflix, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, and Amazon.com have also expanded their insurance policies to offer travel benefits to US employees who may need to access out-of-state abortion services.
