For a more stable US workforce, pregnant workers need stronger protection

Over the last few decades, women have become the engine of our economy, entering the workforce in record numbers while continuing to be singularly responsible for producing the next generation of workers. As these socioeconomic shifts have been underway, public policy has failed to create the supports necessary to keep our working mothers safe.

Women are now the primary breadwinner in roughly half of American households. On top of that, an estimated 72 percent of female workers will become pregnant during the course of their careers. And yet, in this country pregnant women still lack adequate workplace protection under the law, fostering deep economic instability.

Far too many pregnant women continue to be discharged or denied reasonable workplace accommodations, provisions often as simple as a stool or an extra bathroom break, leaving them physically stressed and economically vulnerable.   

The time has never been more critical as maternal mortality rates reach new heights in the wake of a viral pandemic that has left pregnant workers even more susceptible to health risks. In 2020, more than 850 pregnant women died, a 14 percent jump year over year, with Black women almost three times as likely to die from maternal causes as white women. This is stark and devastating evidence that our health and workplace laws are failing to provide adequate protection for our nation’s mothers.   

To put a point on it, one need only refer to the volume of litigation and pregnancy discrimination complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — which hit almost 40,000 in the last decade — to conclude that we have to strengthen and expand our current laws. More than 30 states have enacted expanded protections for pregnant workers, including Maryland, which passed the bipartisan Reasonable Accommodations for Disabilities Due to Pregnancy Act in 2013. This law has helped countless Maryland workers receive the kind of modifications that kept their pregnancies and jobs secure.   

This state rule protects the full range of pregnancy disabilities and creates the pathway by which employees can engage in meaningful dialogue with their employers regarding workplace accommodations. However, many advocates have argued that the law needs to be updated and bolstered in key ways. 

“Existing law would be improved if [pregnant] women didn’t have to establish a disability before they can have an accommodation,” said Glendora Hughes, general counsel of the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, who oversees pregnancy discrimination complaints and litigation for the state, in a March interview with me.   

The law should be clarified to ensure that healthy pregnancies, and not just those with a “disability that is contributed to or caused by pregnancy” receive full protection under the law. Pregnancy, as we all know, creates physical limitations and should be safeguarded in the normal course of progression, to ensure that those disabilities don’t arise. In addition, updated legislation should specifically bar an employer from pushing a pregnant worker into unpaid leave, when an accommodation is available. These provisions have been considered but thus far, state senators have failed to get these updated protections across the finish line.

It’s time our country stood up for all working mothers.   

It’s time our nation’s lawmakers passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would create a federal standard of protection for pregnant workers across the country and fill the gaps in existing Maryland law. This bipartisan, bicameral bill has been languishing for far too long in the Senate, after passing the U.S. House of Representatives multiple times by an overwhelming majority. Last month, bill sponsors Sens Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) called on their colleagues to take up the issue at a webinar hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center.   

There are many ways we can come together to protect our new parents including enacting paid parental leave, lowering the cost of child and infant care and ensuring that every new parent has the means to feed and protect their children. But we can start with this simple protection, which has the support of the majority of representatives, would add minimal costs and red tape, and ensure that the next generation has a fighting chance. 

As Cassidy so aptly observed, pregnant women “contribute to our today and carry our future.”  

The health of our future is at stake.   

Maggie Cordish was most recently a policy adviser to White House adviser Ivanka Trump on paid leave and family policy. She is a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington D.C.