Meta, the company originally dubbed Facebook, has cautioned its employees against discussing the recent Supreme Court decision that saw the overturning of Roe v. Wade, The New York Times reported.
Managers at the company cited a policy placing "strong guardrails around social, political and sensitive conversations" in the workplace, according to people who spoke anonymously. Managers with the tech company also pointed employees to a company memo stating that "discussing abortion openly at work has a heightened risk of creating a hostile work environment," so the company had taken "the position that we would not allow open discussion." Meta issued the memo on May 12, 10 days after Politico's May 2 leak of the Supreme Court's draft opinion.
Ambroos Vaes, a Meta software engineer, expressed that he was dispirited by the company censoring conversations.
"On our internal Workplace platform," Vaes wrote, "moderators swiftly remove posts or comments mentioning abortion. The 'respectful' communications policy that was put in place explicitly disallows it. Limited discussion can only happen in groups of up to 20 employees who follow a set playbook, but not out in the open."
Still, Meta has said it would refund travel expenses "to the extent permitted by law" for staff who needed "to access out-of-state health care and reproductive services."
Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who is exiting Meta this fall, wrote in a Facebook post, "The Supreme Court's ruling jeopardizes the health and the lives of millions of girls and women across the country.
"It threatens to undo the progress women have made in the workplace and to strip women of economic power. It will make it harder for women to achieve their dreams."
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