New laws help pregnant workers
Both abortion camps back safeguards in some states
When South Carolina passed a law last year to provide pregnant workers and new mothers with more protections in the workplace, it was driven by an unlikely alliance: supporters of abortion rights working alongside religious groups that oppose them.
“We were all on the same page pragmatically,” said Ashley Crary Lidow, associate director of policy and government relations at the Women’s Rights & Empowerment Network in Columbia, South Carolna, which supports abortion rights.
Palmetto Family Council, a religious advocacy group in Columbia, also said the partnership had “raised some eyebrows” around the Statehouse.
After all, the two groups opposed each other on abortion legislation the day before the workplace bill hit the Senate floor.
As a series of states have moved to put tighter restrictions on abortion, another, nascent movement is simmering in the background: Unusual partners are coming together to strengthen workplace safeguards for women.
The new laws help begin to address what advocates on both sides of the abortion divide see as a disconnect. Many of the states that have recently enacted more restrictive abortion laws, they say, have some of the weakest support systems for pregnant women and new mothers in the workplace.
Like South Carolina, Kentucky recently established laws that require many employers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers and new mothers.
The new rules — which have been passed in more than two dozen states — strengthen existing requirements under federal law by making employer responsibilities more explicit. Examples of the kinds of accommodations that must be provided include giving a pregnant worker more frequent bathroom breaks or a lighter-duty position. Even so, the laws say that companies do not have to make allowances if doing so would impose an undue hardship on them .
State Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr, a Republican who introduced Kentucky’s accommodations bill, said she thought that part of the challenge in passing protection rules was that just 4 of the 38 state senators are women.
“The hardest sell on these bills, I have to say, are to men,” said Kerr, an opponent of abortion. “And what I stressed to them, these pro-life legislators, is that this is a pro-life measure. We want our women to have safe pregnancies so they can have healthy babies.”
Just before a Senate committee vote, Sen. Dan Seum, a Republican, said that he would back the bill, but he added that he “can always tell when those on the committee have never owned and operated a business.”
Kerr replied, “It’s also always easy to tell who on these committees have never been pregnant.”
Kate Miller, advocacy director at the American Civil Liberties Union in Kentucky, said an alliance with the Catholic Conference of Kentucky helped raise the bill’s profile, which in turn attracted attention from business groups such as the Louisville Chamber of Commerce.
“They were so invested on this issue,” Miller said of the church. “That made a really big difference.”