Lauren Boebert under fire for attacking companies offering to cover travel expenses for out-of-state abortions

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Right-wing congresswoman Lauren Boebert has come under fire for criticising companies that have offered to help cover employees’ travel costs for abortion procedures.

“Anyone else consider that these companies suddenly offering to pay for employee abortions are doing so just to avoid paying maternity leave?” the Republican from Colorado tweeted on Monday.

“Cheaper to kill the baby … true evil personified.”

In response to a leaked draft opinion earlier this month which indicated the Supreme Court was set to overturn Roe v Wade, a number of executives in the boardrooms of major American companies have issued statements that expresses their commitment to offer new benefits or funds to address the potential reversal of the landmark legislation.

For instance, Amazon has told US employees that it would cover up to $4,000 (£3,206) of travel expenses for medical procedures, including abortions, according to Reuters, while fellow tech giant Apple has said that its health plan covers abortion care and travel costs, if necessary, too.

In the weeks after the leaked draft was made known, Microsoft said that it would be extending travel expense assistance to employees seeking abortion and “gender-affirming care” who have limited access to those services in their home state, while Starbucks released a memo on 16 May that announced the Seattle-based coffee chain would begin reimbursing employees and their enrolled dependents for any travel expenses incurred while obtaining an abortion or gender-affirming care.

The conspiracy-touting far-right congresswoman has toed the Republican party line when it comes to the policy of a federal law providing paid parental leave, something that is done in more than 120 nations by law.

In a separate controversial incident online, Ms Boebert panned Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg back in the fall for taking two months off to spend time with the son he’d adopted with his husband, Chasten.

“Listen, I’m a mother of four,” she said in a video posted on her Youtube account. “I delivered one of my children in the front seat of my truck. Because, as a mom of four, we got things to do. Ain’t nobody got time for two and a half months of maternity leave. We have a world to save here.”

Though Mr Buttigieg told reporters at the time that he was on hand “24/7” to deal with any emergencies, Ms Boebert condemned him for taking the time off to spend with his newborn.

“While the country fell into one of the worst supply-chain crises since 1979, the guy in charge of it all, Mayor Pete, was on a two-month maternity, paternity, whatever the heck you want to call it, leave,” she added in her monologue, in what many perceived to be a not-so-subtle swipe about the transportation secretary’s sexual orientation.

“The guy was gone, the guy was not working. Because why? He was trying to figure out how to chest feed.”

Much like in the fall, people were swift online to call out the freshman congresswoman’s misleading tweet this time around when it came to companies providing funds or benefits for employees seeking healthcare procedures outside of their home state.

Some pointed out the irony in seeing a far-right lawmaker seem to support paid parental leave – a bread and butter issue for progressives – while others took to calling her conspiratorial tweet as the real personification of “evil”.

In the US, you are permitted to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off after welcoming a new child into your home, so long as there’s 50 people or more employed at the company. This was passed with the Medical Leave Act of 1993, but there is still no federal law that provides paid time off.

There are some states, such as Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Jersey, California, New York and Puerto Rico, that provide some paid maternity benefits.