How to Respond to the Supreme Court Reversal of Roe v. Wade

Given Colorado laws, the US Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has little impact on state residents’ immediate access to legal abortions. It does, however, have an impact on Colorado employers. In today’s world, companies need to manage their relationship to this, and all, political developments involving societal issues. Employees and customers increasingly expect your corporate social responsibility (CSR) to address societal issues they consider important. As shown in a prior post, ignoring this expectation is costly and increasingly infeasible as CSR drives business performance and financial results.

The bottom line is that businesses need to consider their response to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling. To help your company craft its response, following are the principal ways major brands have responded:

• Making public statements. Some major brands have issued statements decrying the ruling. For example, Lyft said the ruling will “hurt millions of women” and Buzzfeed that it’s “regressive and horrific.” Although a public statement in support of the Court’s decision is also a CSR response, it does not appear that any major brand has done this.
  
• Joining a collective position. Over 350 companies make up Don’t Ban Equality, a coalition of businesses that signed a letter opposing restrictions on abortion access. Signatories include Burton Snowboards, Eileen Fisher, Etsy, Levi Strauss, Nordstrom and Yelp.
• Addressing the healthcare implications. Since American companies operate in an employer-sponsored healthcare system, eliminating the option to get an abortion is an HR issue. Not surprisingly, dozens of companies, including Citi, Google, Grubhub, Nike and Patagonia, have updated their employee health benefits to safeguard access to safe and legal abortions. In fact, this is the most common company response to the high Court’s ruling. Company policy updates consist largely of reimbursement for travel and medical expenses for employees seeking abortions. While your Colorado employees might not personally need this benefit, research suggests that their company loyalty and intention to will falter if your company doesn’t offer it to any out-of-state employees who might need it.
• Leveraging the company’s business to promote change. Some companies are conducting business in a way that furthers an abortion-related cause, most commonly the on the pro-choice side. Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, for example, implied that the company’s content creation would be used as a tool to restore reproductive rights and Google announced that it will protect the privacy of women seeking abortions by deleting location data when people visit abortion clinics.
• Supporting employee and customer activism. Some brands have instituted policies to encourage employee protests and other activism. Live Nation and Patagonia, for example, will post bail for employees arrested for peacefully demonstrating against the Court ruling. Lyft, on the other hand, will provide legal support for drivers choosing to drive passengers to abortion appointments despite the risk of a law suit. OkCupid sent an in-app notification to every US user in a state likely to ban abortion encouraging them to call their elected officials and demand that they protect women’s right to choose.
• Supporting nonprofits. Companies that donate to pro-choice organizations include Freshly, Levi’s and Lululemon. Because the number of women seeking abortions in Colorado is expected to skyrocket as out-of-state women who have lost this right flock here, giving pro-choice organizations cash, in-kind donation and volunteer time might be especially impactful here. Of course, a company’s CSR might also involve donating to pro-life nonprofits, but no major brand appears to have done this in response to the high Court’s ruling (although many brands have donated to political candidates with pro-life stands over the last few years).
• Doing nothing. Inaction is an option that some brands, including Marriott, PepsiCo and Walmart, have opted for (at least for now). But it’s not risk free. Whether or not your company chooses to discuss the ruling, odds are its break rooms, slack channels and online meetings are buzzing with discussion. If your employees hold views similar to those of Americans overall, the majority of them disapprove of the ruling. This means that your workforce is experiencing anger, fear, sadness and other negative emotions. The same can be said of customers, some of which have called for boycotts of companies that are staying mum. Disregarding how important this issue is to key stakeholders will undermine your relationship with them. In other words, for most companies not taking any action will be interpreted as a taking a position. Neutrality is not an option.

CSR involves managing positions on key societal issues, including those that are politicized. These include diversity equity and inclusion, climate change and now abortion. Long gone are the days when companies could be good corporate citizens by only supporting uncontroversial causes far from the political fray. Today, it’s impossible to conduct CSR without making political statements. The only question is how effectively companies manage their CSR and, thus, successfully navigate through the highly politicized civil society they operate in.

​For assistance in designing and executing your CSR strategy, contact us.