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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Opinion: The GOP keeps making things worse for pregnant people | |
Opinion by Jill Filipovic | |
Updated: | |
5:10 PM EDT, Tue April 30, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
One thing you might think abortion rights advocates and opponents could | |
agree on would be extending workplace protections to pregnant workers, | |
postpartum workers and those who have just undergone pregnancy-related | |
medical procedures. Even after Roe v. Wade was overturned, a law doing | |
just that . | |
Despite the significant political differences dividing those in | |
opposition over abortion, surely we can all agree on supporting people | |
during and after pregnancy, right? | |
Wrong. | |
Seventeen anti-abortion Republican attorneys general are currently � | |
over that same law, the , which provides a for pregnant and | |
post-pregnant women whose companies employ at least 15 people, so long | |
as the accommodations and protections don’t cause “undue | |
hardship” for the employer. These accommodations and protections | |
include providing seating, adequate bathroom breaks and time off for | |
prenatal appointments. | |
The issue for these Republicans? The law also requires that employers | |
make “reasonable accommodations” for “pregnancy, childbirth or | |
related medical conditions”— and Republicans object to giving women | |
time off for abortion, a pregnancy-related procedure. | |
To be clear, this act does not offer paid time off for anything – not | |
pregnancy, not childbirth, not miscarriage, not abortion. It does not | |
make employers pay for anything, nor make any accommodations that are | |
unduly burdensome. It is, simply, a law that seeks to impede | |
discrimination against women for pregnancy, a condition that the of | |
American women will experience. | |
It essentially says that if there is some workplace task a person | |
cannot do because of a pregnancy-related condition, and that inability | |
is temporary (because pregnancy, thank God, is not forever), and it’s | |
reasonable for an employer to accommodate it, they must. For example, | |
letting a pregnant bank teller sit rather than stand, making sure a | |
pregnant health aide can pee when she needs to, granting a pregnant | |
paralegal’s request for the afternoon off so she can make a prenatal | |
appointment, not penalizing a pregnant waitress because she called off | |
for the day because of a miscarriage and, yes, giving a pregnant worker | |
an unpaid day off so she can have or recover from an abortion if it’s | |
not unduly burdensome to switch her shift. | |
These 17 attorneys general all represent Republican states, have | |
banned abortion. Ostensibly some of the women requesting time off for | |
abortions will be those whose pregnancies had serious problems for | |
which abortion was lifesaving. Others, though, may have to travel out | |
of state, or will self-induce at home, and these Republican attorneys | |
general want to make that even harder. But the real issue is just | |
abortion itself. The PWFA is a federal law, which means it applies | |
across the United States, including in states where abortion remains | |
legal. The Republican attorneys general who to it don’t want women | |
in those states to be accommodated, either – they want their own | |
hostility to abortion to cross state lines. | |
The argues that elective abortions “are not themselves ‘medical | |
conditions’ arising from pregnancy, but instead voluntary procedures | |
that terminate pregnancy.” Well, prenatal appointments, scans and | |
scheduled C-sections are also not medical conditions arising from | |
pregnancy, and are often entirely voluntary (though, in the case of | |
prenatal care and scans, strongly recommended, and in the case of | |
C-sections, sometimes necessary). Breastfeeding, too, is common and | |
recommended, but not a requirement for either a healthy pregnancy or a | |
healthy child. | |
And let’s just call this what it is: Republicans attempting to be | |
even crueler to women seeking abortions. Put yourself in the shoes of a | |
woman who is pregnant and does not want to be. The is a low-income, | |
unmarried, in her 20s and a mother already, according to the New York | |
Times. Roughly half of women who end pregnancies in the US live below | |
the poverty level (only about Americans generally lives below the | |
poverty level, according to the US Census Bureau). | |
We’re talking about a lot of struggling single moms who are in | |
work-a-day jobs, who then have to have a personal and humiliating | |
conversation with their bosses about their need to take a day off for | |
an extremely common but still deeply stigmatized medical procedure. And | |
these attorneys general want to make that even harder by allowing | |
bosses to discriminate against them. | |
Most women who take time off for abortions, I suspect, do not disclose | |
the reason to their employer. But if they do, they shouldn’t face | |
discriminatory treatment. That is all the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act | |
seeks to do. | |
Republicans have and again that they aren’t anti-woman, they are | |
simply pro-life. But it’s hard to see how these protections would do | |
anything to increase abortion rates. They would simply offer women a | |
sliver more protection in the workforce, something people on all sides | |
of the abortion issue should be able to agree on. But Republicans | |
don’t seem interested in doing that – unless they can also | |
stigmatize abortion and heap greater shame, humiliation and difficulty | |
on women seeking the procedure. | |
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