Staff Reports
The health plan of Hollywood's biggest union, SAG-AFTRA, has said that it will reimburse plan members and their dependents for out-of-state travel and lodging costs for abortions. It also said that it would "provide access to safe abortion services regardless of where they live or work."
SAG-AFTRA has about 160,000 members, including screen actors, broadcast journalists, and news professionals. However, not all of them are eligible for the health plan, which is one of the best in the business.
The announcement was made by the union's health plan on Friday. The plan called abortion "reproductive health care."
SAG-AFTRA Health Plan Adopts Travel Reimbursement Benefit for Participants in States that Prohibit Abortionhttps://t.co/4YdNIf4nHG pic.twitter.com/lSS7NCmsV0
— SAG-AFTRA NEWS (@sagaftranews) August 12, 2022
“All Americans should have equal access to critical, necessary, and often life-saving reproductive health care, wherever they live or work,” the statement said.
Under the new rules, an actress who lives in a state where abortion is legal but works in a state where it is illegal can choose between going home for the procedure or going to the state closest to their workplace where abortion is legal.
If the actress lives in a state where abortion is illegal, she can choose to have the procedure done in the closest state where abortion is legal.
A more detailed document says that the plan will also cover the "Dependent spouses" and "Dependent children" of performers, but that the latter will only be paid for "in case of an emergency abortion."
The news comes after the Supreme Court's historic decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. This gives the states and their voters the power to decide for themselves about abortion.
Several Hollywood studios have already said they will pay employees' travel costs if they want to get an abortion. Breitbart News said that Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery are among them.
Because Georgia and Louisiana offer good tax breaks that studios don't want to give up, a lot of movies and TV shows are shot there. Both states have recently passed laws that make it harder to get an abortion. In Louisiana, all abortions are illegal.
A federal judge recently ruled that Georgia's fetal heartbeat law, which would make abortion illegal after six weeks, can go into effect.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Breitbart.
