While the Supreme Court of the United States has taken the decision to no longer protect the right to abortion, employees of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, cannot openly discuss it internally.
In the United States, abortion is no longer a federal right since Friday, June 24 and the decision of the Supreme Court to annul the judgment which protected it. Terrible news for all women across the country — but news that employees at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, can’t talk about internally.
The New York Times has learned that the company instructed its employees on Friday not to openly discuss the Supreme Court’s decision on internal public communication channels. The newspaper explains that this decision is based on a memo, released on May 12 by the company, which explains that ” openly discussing abortion at work could create a hostile work environment “.Meta also states in this memo that the company therefore decided to ” do not allow open discussions ” on this topic.
Meta ‘doesn’t allow’ discussions about abortion
Meta’s internal memo had already been talked about in May, shortly after its publication. At that time, a working document outlining the court’s decision had leaked and was published by Politico. The memo is based on the company’s internal regulations, which prohibit employees ” to discuss or debate whether or not abortion is acceptable, or political, religious or humanitarian views on the subject “, according to The Verge.
In May, the decision came as a huge shock to employees, who described it as ” dystopian “. This Friday, the same reactions were heard, and the New York Times indicates that many employees expressed their opposition to the decree.
Messages addressing the situation in internal chat were reportedly deleted, the newspaper said. A Meta engineer also reportedly explained on LinkedIn that discussions on this topic would only be allowed in “ groups of up to 20 people », and in a private way.