Amazon will reimburse employees $4,000 if they cross state lines to get an abortion



Amazon is committing to financing the abortions of its employees.

On Monday, the second-largest private employer in the U.S. told its staff that it will pay up to $4,000 annually in travel expenses for “non-life-threatening medical treatments including abortions.”

Reuters reported that Amazon’s decision to subsidize its employees' abortions places the online mega-retailer on a growing list of large corporations with similar policies on the books. Citigroup Inc. and Yelp Inc. both announced that they would subsidize the abortion process for their employees in response to Republican-backed state laws limiting abortion access.

In a similar vein, the popular ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft previously vowed to cover the legal fees for drivers in Texas who encounter legal difficulties for driving women to abortion clinics, Fortune reported.

The company’s new benefit will have retroactive coverage and is available to both its U.S. employees and their covered dependents who are enrolled in either the Premera or Aetna health plans. The reimbursement benefits are available to employees at all levels of the company. Warehouse workers and executives alike can be reimbursed for expenses incurred in their pursuit of an abortion.

However, in order to qualify for the reimbursement, the individuals seeking to receive an abortion must travel more than 100 miles.

Amazon announced that it would start financing abortions the same day that it stopped offering U.S.-based employees paid time off when they get diagnosed with COVID-19.

On Monday, a draft decision indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturnRoe v. Wade was leaked to the media.

The draft is of the court’s majority opinion and is written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito. It is believed that the opinion had already circulated inside the court prior to it being leaked.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote.

Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division,” Alito continued.

The draft decision is related to an outstanding challenge against a piece of pro-life legislation out of Mississippi.

“The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions,” Alito concludes. “On the contrary, an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of common law until 1973.”

Amazon blocks ad for book probing BLM leaders: 'Content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted'



Amazon reportedly blocked an advertisement this week for a new book probing the Marxist roots of Black Lives Matter leaders, claiming that the site does not permit content that "revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics."

What are the details?

The book, "BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution," written by former journalist and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation Mike Gonzalez, reportedly "examines who the BLM leaders are, delving into their backgrounds and exposing their agendas" to prove them "to be avowed Marxists who say they want to dismantle our way of life."

According to the Daily Signal, the Heritage Foundation attempted to buy an ad for Gonzalez's book but was denied. The conservative think tank said that Amazon, the nation's largest retailer, "blocked it from its website."

In a notice to Heritage, the tech giant stated that the ad was blocked "specifically for the following reasons: Your ad contains book/s or content that is not allowed. Content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted. Please remove this content from your ad."

What else?

In response to the news, Gonzalez told the Daily Signal, "I wrote this book because most of the press refused to cover the important questions about the people and organizations behind Black Lives Matter. Now Amazon is trying to limit how many Americans read this book."

"The American people deserve answers to those questions, especially after the 630 or more riots that left our cities burning, businesses destroyed and billions in damage, and Americans dead," Gonzalez, a former Wall Street Journal opinion columnist, said.

"I have to wonder if Nikole Hannah-Jones' and Ibram X. Kendi's books — which also sell in [Amazon's] 'Black and African American History' category, where my book often outranked them in the past week — face similar constraints. Herbert Marcuse, the critical theorist who authored the essay 'Repressive Tolerance,' would be proud of Amazon," he added.

The book is still available for purchase on Amazon despite the tech giant blocking advertising for it. Amazon did not respond to the Daily Signal's request for comment.

Anything else?

It is far from the first time that Amazon has censored or suppressed the distribution of conservative content.

Perhaps most notably, the retailer — which still sells copies of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" — removed Ryan T. Anderson's best-selling transgenderism critique, "When Harry Became Sally," from its online store in February.

In March, the retailer went even further, announcing a ban on the sale of any and all books that "frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness," despite gender dysphoria, a common topic included in books about transgenderism, being listed by the American Psychological Association (APA) as a mental disorder.

Amazon also pulled a documentary film about conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas without explanation — and during Black History Month, no less.

Amazon deplatforms book on transgenderism by conservative author without explanation



Amazon's web store has removed a best-selling book by a conservative author on the science and politics of transgenderism without notifying the author or giving him a reason why the book was deplatformed.

Ethics & Public Policy Center President Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., on Sunday discovered that his book, "When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment" had been removed from Amazon's online store.

The book, which was an Amazon and Washington Post best-seller, surveys the debate on gender dysphoria, sex reassignment surgeries, and anti-discrimination law and considers biology, psychology, and philosophy to address what the public policy response should be for individuals who struggle to accept their bodies.

Anderson told TheBlaze that Amazon did not provide him with notice or an explanation for why his book was made unavailable to purchase. He only found out after people attempting to buy the book told him the listings on Amazon were taken down. Customers cannot purchase a used copy, the Kindle edition, or even the Audible version of Anderson's book.

I hope you’ve already bought your copy, cause Amazon just removed my book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to t… https://t.co/Mr35GE61oS
— Ryan T. Anderson (@Ryan T. Anderson)1613939645.0
While you can’t buy the book on Amazon, you can still get it (for now?) at Barnes and Noble. Given the aggressive p… https://t.co/QkuuyEusV4
— Ryan T. Anderson (@Ryan T. Anderson)1613941172.0

"When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment was released exactly three years ago (Feb 20, 2018 to be precise). It was attacked twice on the New York Times op-ed page. The Washington Post ran a hit piece on it that they then had to entirely rewrite to fix all their errors. It was obvious the critics hadn't read the book," Anderson said. "People who have actually read my book discovered that it was a thoughtful and accessible presentation of the state of the scientific, medical, philosophical and legal debates. Yes, it advances an argument from a certain viewpoint. No, it didn't get any facts wrong, and it didn't engage in any name-calling."

He noted that his book received widespread praise from various medical and psychology academics and professionals.

"It was praised by a who's who of experts: the former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, a longtime psychology professor at NYU, a professor of medical ethics at Columbia Medical School, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Utah, a distinguished professor at Harvard Law School, an eminent legal philosopher at Oxford, and a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton," said Anderson.

"None of that matters. It's not about how you say it, it's not about how rigorously you argue it, it's not about how charitably you present it. It's about whether you dissent from a new orthodoxy. Three years after publication, in the very same week that the House of Representatives is going to ram through a radical transgender bill amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Amazon erases my book opposing gender ideology from their cyber shelves. Make no mistake, both Big Government and Big Tech can undermine human dignity and liberty, human flourishing and the common good."

Anderson said that his publisher had contacted Amazon but had not yet received an explanation for why the book was deplatformed.

The timing of Amazon’s disappearing of my transgender book is, uh, timely... My op-ed in today’s @nypost is on the… https://t.co/elqpyAdV3O
— Ryan T. Anderson (@Ryan T. Anderson)1613996492.0

TheBlaze also reached out to Amazon, but comment for this article was not made available prior to publication.

Amazon was widely criticized by conservatives on social media for deplatforming the book.

Amazon accounts for over 83% of books sold in the US. When @amazon decides to stop selling a best-selling book, it… https://t.co/4mhOyB3qa9
— Abigail Shrier (@Abigail Shrier)1613942169.0
Hey @JeffBezos, why will you let Americans read Hitler on his Kampf, but not let us read @RyanTAnd on gender ideolo… https://t.co/cf9qsNhjP1
— Rod Dreher (@Rod Dreher)1613943245.0
This is ridiculous. @amazon please fix this error and restore @RyanTAnd’s book immediately. Unless this was intenti… https://t.co/6ftH01CNJ6
— Lila Rose (@Lila Rose)1613947651.0
I am transgender and this book is enlightening, thoughtful and well-researched. It provides necessary and important… https://t.co/203UuIIxOC
— Chad Felix Greene (@Chad Felix Greene)1613950082.0
Bear in mind Amazon has approaching 50% of the entire ecommerce market. One out of five books sold is a Kindle book… https://t.co/LNN0hSNHY7
— Mark Hemingway (@Mark Hemingway)1614002728.0
Some mid-level censor at Amazon appears to be conducting an experiment in what they can get away with:https://t.co/uQTf8XIxbr
— Ross Douthat (@Ross Douthat)1614002207.0
Progressive corporations banning books seems bad. https://t.co/UUOYEJN4Yo
— J.D. Vance (@J.D. Vance)1613952102.0