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Abortion: How corporate America is responding to the Supreme Court ruling

Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal joins the Live show to look at what companies are responding to the Roe v. Wade overturn, including travel and healthcare costs for employees seeking abortion access, in addition to the economic impact this ruling will have on women in the workforce.

Video transcript

DAVE BRIGGS: Businesses of all sorts and sizes taking sides in this debate, or at the very least, declaring their support, or lack thereof. Landmines are certainly around every economic and political corner. Allie Canal here with the initial reaction of big business. Allie.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yeah, so companies, they've responded very, very quickly to this landmark decision. We've heard statements from Netflix, Apple, Lyft, just to name a few. And at the crux of this, a lot of these companies are saying that they will provide travel coverage to locations that offer legal abortions. I've seen coverage offerings range from $4,000 to $10,000. In some cases, that also includes coverage for spouses and dependents.

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Dick's, another one of those companies offering reimbursements. I just want to take a look at that stock chart because their stock shot up 9% on the heels of that news. So we're seeing companies come out really strong and really fast with these responses.

Now, in addition to corporate responses, we've also heard directly from business leaders. Sheryl Sandberg at Meta, she called this a, quote, "huge setback for women." Melinda Gates, she said pretty much the exact same thing. And then we heard from Steve Case. He is the former CEO of AOL. And he actually brought up an interesting point about the startup culture right now and how this could be pretty detrimental to recruiting talent to this space. So that's something to watch.

And if we're talking about talent and the workforce at large, this could actually have a pretty detrimental impact to women re-entering the workforce. So there is a lot to watch here.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And when you talk about some of the workers there, when you think about some of these costs, if you are a small company, how are you going to be able to react to this? How can you afford to pay for things like this? And perhaps if you don't work for someone, what does that mean for you?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yeah, and that's a really big question moving forward. A lot of research has said, look, 3/4 of women, they're probably going to be able to go out and get legal abortions elsewhere. But that leaves a quarter of women who, for a variety of reasons, monetary reasons, travel restrictions, they're not going to be able to get those abortions. And that lack of choice is going to set them back economically and create this culture, really, of poverty, a cycle of poverty, more or less.

And if we take a specific look at how this could impact women, you're seeing on your screen there that if state level abortion restrictions were eliminated, so this is opposite of what we're seeing right now, it's estimated that more than 500,000 women would re-enter the labor force, earning an annual income of $3 billion. That's earnings overall. It would also increase the labor participation rate for Black and Hispanic women, increase national GDP levels. So there is significant economic upside if this did not happen. But we saw that it did. And now it could have ripple effects.

DAVE BRIGGS: Boy, that's extraordinary. I hadn't thought of it that way. Our labor force participation already is low. Our labor market is already very tight. This could have massive economic implications. Allie, thanks so much. Very good report.