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Citigroup will pay travel costs for employee abortions in response to the Texas law.

Citigroup is the first major U.S. bank to announce a policy change in response to the legislation, which bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

A Citibank operations center in San Antonio. About 8,500 of the bank’s 65,000 U.S. employees are in the state.Credit...Callaghan O'Hare/Bloomberg

Citigroup says it has begun covering travel expenses for employees who seek abortions after a Texas law imposed the most restrictive limits in the nation and prompted similar proposals in other states.

“In response to changes in reproductive health care laws in certain states in the U.S., beginning in 2022 we provide travel benefits to facilitate access to adequate resources,” the bank said in a filing on Tuesday.

About 8,500 of Citigroup’s 65,000 U.S. employees are in Texas.

The policy puts a Wall Street bank alongside smaller or newer companies in responding to the Texas law, which bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy and offers the prospect of $10,000 rewards for successful lawsuits against anyone who “aids or abets” a woman who gets an abortion once fetal cardiac activity can be detected.

The law is the latest blow to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which prohibits states from banning the procedure before a fetus is viable outside the womb, or about 23 weeks of pregnancy. The Texas law’s novel approach has survived court challenges by putting its enforcement power in the hands of the public, rather than the government.

Citigroup declined to comment on the new policy, which was reported earlier by Bloomberg News. No other major bank has announced any similar policy. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley declined to comment on Thursday.

A number of companies in other industries instituted policies in opposition to the law after it went into effect in September. The dating app Bumble created a relief fund for people seeking abortions in the state, Salesforce offered to relocate employees, and Lyft and Uber said they would cover legal costs for drivers transporting women to clinics to receive abortions. Shar Dubey, the chief executive of Match Group — which runs online dating sites including Match.com, OKCupid and Tinder — created a fund to support employees affected by the legislation.

Lananh Nguyen covers Wall Street. She previously spent more than a decade at Bloomberg News in New York and London, where she wrote about banking and financial markets. More about Lananh Nguyen

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