iple polls show that over half of people in the US believe abortion should be legal in all or most instances. Despite this, abortion has long been seen as a contentious issue, and one that corporate America tends to avoid, even as a growing number of businesses have taken a stand on other previously divisive issues, such as marriage equality and Black Lives Matter. https://ca36dcfffcb9a521874b4332c44bf9b9.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html One of the only major retailers to respond publicly to the news last week was Levi Strauss & Co, which issued a statement framing the Supreme Court’s decision on the future of abortion as a healthcare issue with significant social and economic implications. “Business leaders are responsible for protecting the health and well-being of our employees, and that includes protecting reproductive rights and abortion access,” the company said. Levi’s went on to note that access to reproductive health care, including abortion, has been a critical factor in the workplace gains women have made over the past 50 years, and said that restricting or criminalising abortion will not only jeopardise that progress, but also disproportionately affect women of colour, putting their well-being at risk and impeding diverse hiring pipelines. Hiring challenges ahead Recruitment has already emerged as a challenge for businesses in states where access to abortion has been restricted, such as Texas and Mississippi. The Guttmacher Institute predicts that 26 states will probably or definitely ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Some businesses have responded to this by promising to reimburse employees if they need to travel out of state for reproductive care. Amazon has said it will pay workers in the US up to US$4,000 in travel expenses annually for non-life threatening medical treatments including abortion. Apple has said its health-insurance policies will cover abortion services and travel fees if necessary, and Levi’s has said it will cover employees’ travel expenses if they need to seek medical care in another state. “Under our current benefits plan, Levi Strauss & Co employees are eligible for reimbursement for healthcare-related travel expenses for services not available in their home state, including those related to reproductive health care and abortion,” the company said. “There is also a process in place through which employees who are not in our benefits plan, including part-time hourly workers, can seek reimbursement for travel costs incurred under the same circumstances.” Citigroup, Yelp, Tesla, Match and Bumble have similar policies in place. A new approach Corporate activism expert and senior lecturer in marketing at Macquarie Business School Abas Mirzaei noted that the way businesses have responded to the abortion argument over the past week is fundamentally different from the way they’ve tackled social issues in the past. “Compared to previous issues where brands have taken an external-oriented approach, contributing to the public debate on important social issues, this time they are adopting an internal approach and are looking at this from an employee health benefit perspective,” Mirzaei told Inside Retail. By focussing on the health of their employees, he said brands are “ticking the box” of being responsible corporate citizens without necessarily aligning themselves as pro- or anti-abortion. But while this strategy is arguably safer from a PR perspective, in an industry where the majority of workers are women, it may not go far enough. That’s why Levi’s is encouraging more retailers to speak out in support of reproductive rights. “We know this is a fraught conversation; it’s not something we enter into lightly. But women make up 58 per cent of our global workforce, and in recent years, numerous employees have expressed to leadership their growing alarm over the rollback of all forms of reproductive care,” the company said. “Given what is at stake, business leaders need to make their voices heard and act to protect the health and well-being of our employees. That means protecting reproductive rights.”