The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, ending the federally protected right to an abortion. In response, banks and financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs said they would cover travel costs for employees seeking an abortion in other states.

Why should we care?
Banks and fintechs will most likely struggle supporting employees’ reproductive rights while under pressure from lawmakers and stakeholders in anti-abortion states where they do business. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, for example, told employees in an internal memo, “Many of you are deeply upset, and I stand with you.” But the company is also charting ahead with a plan to open a 5,000-person office in Dallas, Texas, which has had a six-week abortion ban in place since May 2021. What’s more, many of these financial groups have backed the election campaigns of anti-abortion lawmakers responsible for so-called trigger laws. "The possible overturning of Roe will put a spotlight on corporate funders of regressive politicians who enact laws that limit, curtail, or even criminalize women's reproductive freedoms," Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, said before the ruling came out. Beyond the potential for consumers to choose where they park their money according to political alignments, it also seems the financial sector—especially fintechs—will face pressure to recalibrate their data-collection processes. Venmo and other payments apps may be the subject of law-enforcement requests from states that punish people who seek abortions out of state: Whether these payments apps stop collecting this data or refuse to comply with these law-enforcement requests remains to be seen. The same questions are true for employer-provided reimbursements for out-of-state reproductive care. State governments may tell businesses—or the insurance providers and insurtechs funding this care—to hand over employee reproductive-care data or face expulsion or punishment from the state. Whatever is next, it seems access to reproductive is now increasingly contingent upon employment status, becoming another highly unequal pocket of US healthcare—other rights may be stripped away soon, too.