Pregnancy

Help Close the Pregnancy Loophole!

Tell your Representative to co-sponsor the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to ensure that pregnant women are treated fairly on the job.

Call (202) 224-3121 today!

Yes it's true: In 2012, getting pregnant can still cost you your job.

Thanks to a gap opened between discrimination laws and disability laws by court decisions, some employers are refusing to accommodate even simple requests that help workers maintain a healthy pregnancy.

Here are three startling examples of women who, thanks to the pregnancy loophole, were fired for doing what was best for their pregnancies:

• A retail sales associate in Salina, Kansas was fired for drinking water while working because it violated store policy.
• A nursing home activities director in Valparaiso, Indiana lost her job because she could no longer lift heavy tables, an activity that took up less than 10 minutes of her workday and with which her coworkers routinely volunteered to assist.
• A pregnant truck driver in Tennessee was instructed by her obstetrician not to lift more than 20 pounds and sought light duty work. Her employer terminated her, as it made such modifications only to those injured on the job.

Sounds crazy, right? Unfortunately, thousands of pregnant women are forced to choose between losing their jobs (or taking unpaid leave) and endangering their pregnancies, when just a few small workplace accommodations are usually all that's needed.

To close this egregious pregnancy loophole, Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was introduced today in the House of Representatives by Reps. Nadler (D-NY) and a number of his colleagues. To give this bill a solid start, we need as many Representatives to co-sponsor this bill as possible.

Will you take 3 minutes to call your Representative and ask them to co-sponsor the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act? Calling is easy to do. Read more »

 Are we living in 2012 or 1950? I pondered that thought a lot while reading some of the stories in this week’s roundup. Today we have some stories on a pregnancy-based firing in Texas, a Wisconsin legislator’s explanation of the wage gap, and more.

First up, in ridiculous news: a teacher in the Dallas, TX was fired for her out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Welcome back to 1950!

Cathy Samford – a science teacher and the volleyball coach at Heritage Christian Academy – was fired last fall after disclosing her pregnancy to the Christian school she worked for. She and her fiancé, her baby’s father, had been planning on getting married later this year.

School headmaster Dr. Ron Taylor defends firing Samford, explaining the Heritage Christian Academy “expects their teachers to be ministers as well as educators,” and went on to add that “It's not that she's pregnant. The issue here is being an unmarried mother.” Read more »

On Tuesday, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court held that state employees who are denied their Family Medical and Leave Act (FMLA) rights to take time off because of their own serious medical conditions have no meaningful remedy. The facts in Coleman v. Maryland Court of Appeals don’t necessarily suggest that this is a case about sex discrimination and pregnancy discrimination: Daniel Coleman, a man employed by the Maryland Court of Appeals, sought sick leave for a serious medical condition and was terminated—in violation of the FMLA, he claimed. As Justice Ginsburg explained in her powerful dissent, however, whether and how the FMLA protects state employees who need time of because of their own serious medical conditions is in many ways fundamentally an argument about gender and the protections the Constitution provides against sex discrimination. According to five Justices on the Supreme Court, women just lost that argument. Read more »

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal discusses the booming business of “fertility finance,” lenders that specialize in loans for fertility treatments. The article does a good job of illuminating some of the important issues around this industry, including the potential for predatory lending practices and whether doctors should be able to advertise a lender’s services if the doctor has invested in the company. Executives at these companies call them “recession-proof” because couples facing infertility will always want a baby whether the economy is booming or not. From an economic perspective, these companies are merely meeting a demand for access to fertility treatments among individuals who aren’t super-wealthy. I think there is an alternative answer to this demand that the article doesn’t address: insurance coverage of fertility treatments. Read more »

Hi all, and welcome to another weekly blog roundup! This week we’ve got stories about some anti-choice bills in Virginia, a new video and call to action on SNDA,  an update on Samantha Garvey, some of the perils faced by pregnant women on the job, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure decision on Planned Parenthood, and some wrap-ups on blog carnivals we participated in this week, all after the jump. Read more »

Over the years I’ve worked with some leaders/employees who suggested, some more strongly, that we base employment related decisions such as hiring, promotion, benefits, terminations, etc. on an employee’s health. Read more »

I am guess all of us in the Reproductive Justice community could use a bit of good news these days. Leave it to my friends over at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women to deliver. They just reported that they have been working on a case in Washington State. A young Native American woman, Misty Jones, pregnant and addicted to prescription pain killers, had agreed to enter substance abuse treatment. Here at the Center, we support comprehensive, family-based drug treatment as the best policy solution to address the problem of drug addiction among pregnant women. Read more »

Just an update on a case I wrote about back in May.

In August, a jury awarded Juana Villegas $200,000 in damages after a federal court ruled that a sheriff’s office violated her constitutional rights when she was shackled while in labor.

I was shocked, but not surprised at the negative reaction to my original blog. Some seem to believe that being a non-citizen renders one less than a full human being. Leave it to The Colbert Report to perfectly capture the current tone of the debate.   Read more »

It’s the end of another week, and we’ve got a new roundup for you. After the jump, stories on Breast Cancer Awareness and Domestic Violence Awareness Month, girls tackling the STEM field, SNAP benefits and more. Read more »