ThinkProgress Logo

Stories tagged with “pregnancy”

Economy

House And Senate To Re-introduce Bill To Protect Pregnant Workers

By Bryce Covert on May 14, 2013 at 4:00 pm

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is expected to be re-introduced in the Senate and House today, a bill that would require employers to “make reasonable accommodations to employees stemming from pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer,” according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). It is sponsored by Sens. Robert Casey (D-PA) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Susan Davis (D-CA), and Marcia Fudge (D-OH).

While it may sound outrageous, women can be fired today for being or becoming pregnant. Despite the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 barring discrimination based on “the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” pregnant workers can be forced out of their jobs or denied accommodations that would allow them to keep working. Some of these might include modifying a policy prohibiting food and drink on the job, providing a stool, assigning heavy lifting duties to other workers, or giving a light-duty position to a pregnant employee.

Stories from around the country illustrate how employers fire or force pregnant women out who need accommodations:

  • Laura works as a program counselor at a facility for people with developmental disabilities. When she was pregnant, her doctor recommended that she not bend or twist when securing wheelchairs to a bus. She asked her supervisor to allow her to make this minor adjustment to her job duties. Her supervisor responded by forcing Laura on to unpaid leave for the rest of her pregnancy, even though she was not disabled and could do her job with this minor accommodation. Her employer also threatened to fire her if she didn’t return to work in four months.
  • Maria,* a security worker in California, requested a stool to sit on and more frequent assignment rotation when she discovered she was pregnant. Her employer initially refused to accommodate her pregnancy limitations and placed her on involuntary early leave. (*Name changed to protect privacy.)
  • Jane Doe worked at a casual eatery in Washington, D.C., preparing food and working “on the line” serving customers. After Jane became pregnant, she needed more frequent bathroom breaks and to be allowed to drink water and eat on her scheduled breaks. Her supervisor yelled at her publicly when she returned from the bathroom, ordering her – but no one else – to notify all of the other employees and to get his consent before using the bathroom… Her supervisor also denied her access to water during her four-hour shifts. When Jane asked for advance permission to leave early from a shift to attend a prenatal medical appointment, she got no response from her supervisor, despite asking him repeatedly for an answer. The day of the appointment her supervisor told her she could not leave and threatened to fire if she did… She kept the appointment, and when she returned to work, he immediately fired her.
  • Diana Teigland has been a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service for the past 9 years in Minnesota, but this past summer her doctor put her on a heat restriction—limiting her time outside on extremely hot days—because of her pregnancy. Unfortunately, this past summer had a great number of very hot days. Even though her employer provides indoor work for work-related conditions, they will not provide inside duties for her.

    • The problem is widespread: 3,745 pregnancy discrimination charges were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year. Complaints with the agency rose 65 percent between 1992 and 2007.

    But many women work while pregnant: 62 percent of the women who gave birth in a one-year period worked while they were pregnant. If a woman is forced out of her job or fired, she loses income and will also likely struggle to re-enter the job market, particularly because new mothers often face discrimination. The stress of job loss is also associated with an increased risk of premature birth and/or low birth weight.

    Alyssa

    ‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’ Tackles ‘Legitimate Rape’ And Rapists Seeking Custody

    By Alyssa Rosenberg on Mar 28, 2013 at 9:07 am

    Before last night’s episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit aired, NBC was promoting the episodes by teasing that the headlines it would be ripping its storyline from were the ones made by former Rep. Todd Akin last year, when he claimed that women who were survivors of so-called “legitimate rape” couldn’t become pregnant. The episode did that, recasting Akin as a former Congressman and discredited obstetrician. But rather than stopping there, SVU did something even more effective and important, illustrating the consequences of “legitimate rape” claims not just for policymakers, but for survivors—particularly for what they mean for rapists’ ability to seek custody of the children born to women they’ve attacked.

    The case Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) was investigating involved Avery, a sports reporter who brought rape charges against her cameraman, Rick (Homeland‘s David Marciano). When she became pregnant, Rick, who was defending himself, brought to the stand as an expert witness a former Congressman and practicing obstetrician who testified that “Many of my medical colleagues won’t admit it, but in my experience, it’s nearly impossible for a victim of legitimate rape to become pregnant.” The show used the character to illustrate the true insensitivity of that position from both a lawmaker and a doctor’s perspective: when Rick asked the Congressman what he’d do if a rape survivor came to him for medical treatment, the Congressman said, on the stand, “I would tell her, honey, if you need to lie to yourself or your family, okay. But don’t lie to Doc Showalter. Or the Lord.”

    That’s not exactly subtle, but SVU did something smart with the episode, showing how Rick used the Congressman’s testimony to try to retcon not just consensual sex between himself and Avery, but a relationship with her. When Rick had Avery on the stand, he suggested that their conversations on the road as coworkers, her asking him for help with her bags, and the fact that she undressed after she thought he’d left the apartment were all evidence that she had somehow seduced him or consented. “I gave you the child you always wanted,” Rick told Avery in the courtroom, using the fact that she kept the baby because of prior difficulties getting pregnant as evidence of her emotional attachment to him. “How often have you seen an actual rape victim become pregnant and decide to keep the baby?” Rick asked Olivia when he was cross-examining her. Ultimately he’d be acquitted because one member of the jury believed the “legitimate rape” argument, a potent testimonial to the damage that even the limited spread of an idea like this can do.
    Read more

    Alyssa

    ‘Admission’ And The Many Maternal Panics Of Tina Fey

    By Alyssa Rosenberg on Mar 25, 2013 at 10:33 am

    If it takes three instances to make a trend, then Admission, the romantic comedy starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd that opened this weekend, makes it official: Fey may take on a great many subjects in her movies and television work, but her great emerging theme is what happens when professional women in their late thirties are confronted with their own maternal urges. Admission, which flips the script on efforts concerned with fertility like Baby Mama and 30 Rock, could have been a fresh take for Fey, a look at a character who genuinely doesn’t want to have children. But unfortunately, it’s her weakest stab at the subject yet, a movie that’s unwilling to grapple with the reasons other than simply being busy that a woman might have put off childbearing—or why a woman might not want children at all.

    In Admission, unlike her previous characters, who have had trouble conceiving, Portia Nathan, Fey’s rigid Princeton admissions officer character, got pregnant in college. Rather than raise the child, Portia gave up the baby for adoption, and buried all thoughts of having a family so deep that they don’t resurface until 16 years later, when they’re forcibly unearthed by a classmate, John Pressman (Paul Rudd), who believes one of the students at the alternative school that he runs is Portia’s son. What follows is Portia’s quest to get the boy, Jeremiah (Nat Wolff) into Princeton, hoping that his love of learning and exceptionally high test scores will offset his extremely poor grades and lack of activities.

    But while all of her efforts, including getting Jeremiah a chance to stay on campus, setting up an interview with an eccentric professor of philosophy, and trying to juice his ventriloquism hobby into a legitimate side pursuit, are mildly amusing, they also serve to allow Admission to avoid larger, and much more interesting, questions. We learn that Portia’s college boyfriend broke up with her before she found out she was pregnant, but the movie never asks whether she would have kept her child had they stayed together. When, before Portia meets Jeremiah, her long-term boyfriend Mark (Michael Sheen, who played one of Liz Lemon’s most irritating boyfriends on 30 Rock), an English professor, leaves her for a Virginia Woolf scholar he’s gotten pregnant with twins, Admission focuses more on the fact that the other woman is more glamorous than Portia, rather than interrogating the idea that Portia’s stated lack of interest in children might have made her less desirable to a man who feels the pull of a more conventional family structure, even though he hates kids. And while Portia clearly feels that she didn’t do right by Jeremiah, Admission never makes remotely clear what, other than getting him into Princeton, she wants to do with her adopted son. Does she want to support him financially? Have a friendship with him? Of course the discovery of a specific child raises specific questions, but Admission spends more time poking fun at Portia’s fiercely feminist mother Susannah (Lily Tomlin) than it does at actually exploring what Portia would do differently in raising her own child, or why she might genuinely not have wanted children at all, given her upbringing. And the movie never even really resolves the question of whether Portia doesn’t want to be a parent, or whether the trauma of her unwanted pregnancy caused her to bury her maternal urges, preferring instead to throw in a silly montage in place of character development.
    Read more

    Health

    States With The Highest Teen Pregnancy Rates Lack Adequate Sex Ed Requirements

    By Rebecca Leber and Adam Peck on Mar 1, 2013 at 5:00 pm

    Teen pregnancies have fallen to record lows. But according to a new report from Guttmacher Institute that breaks out data by each state, the decline is uneven across the country. New Mexico had the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation in 2008 (the latest available data), followed by Mississippi, Texas, Nevada, Arkansas, and Arizona:

    These states have something in common: They have poor sexual education in schools, and consequently tend to have lower rate of contraception use among teens.

    New Mexico, the state that tops the list, has sex and HIV education in public schools. However, the sexual health information is not required to be medically accurate, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff points out that contraceptive use is lower for New Mexico high school students too, at 60.5 percent compared to 75 percent nationally. Other states with higher teen pregnancy — Arizona, Texas, and Arkansas — do not require sex ed at all, and if it is taught, schools are required to stress abstinence:

    The decline in teen pregnancy is “almost exclusively” a result of more contraceptive use, according to Guttmacher. Birth control use is up to 47 percent of sexually active teens, while teens’ use of both condoms and hormonal contraception rose from 16 percent to 23 percent in recent years.

    But nationally, one in four teens have received abstinence-only education, with no instruction on birth control. Far more states still emphasize abstinence-only sex education over contraception, when they do teach teens about their own bodies at all.

    Health

    Promoting Abstinence Won’t Help Prevent Teen Pregnancy, But Funding More Youth Programs Will

    By Tara Culp-Ressler on Feb 28, 2013 at 3:05 pm

    Although teen birth rates are dropping, the United States still has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world. Particularly since American teens are often shamed about their sexual choices, rather than receiving the actual resources they need, the country has a long way to go when it comes to the way it approaches teen sexuality. The results from a new study underline the point that although abstinence education programs don’t work, a different focus on youth services can effectively lower the rate of teen pregnancies.

    Researchers from University of Minnesota found that teenage girls at high risk for unintended pregnancy were more likely to take steps to lower their risk of becoming pregnant, like regularly using condoms and birth control pills, after receiving additional support from a youth-focused program. Over the course of their study, over 250 sexually active girls between the ages of 13 and 17 were split into two groups — about half were placed in a “Prime Time program” designed to help mitigate risky sexual behaviors by providing personal case management and youth leadership opportunities, while the rest of the teens didn’t receive any special counseling or support. Significant differences emerged in the teens’ sexual behavior:

    All of the participants completed a survey two years after enrolling in the study. This was six months after the girls in the Prime Time intervention completed the program.

    The girls in the Prime Time program reported “significantly more consistent” use of condoms, birth control pills or a combination of both types of contraception than those in the control group, the researchers found.

    The girls in the Prime Time program also reported increases in family connectedness and self-confidence to refuse unwanted sex, as well as reductions in the perceived importance of having sex, the study authors noted in a journal news release.

    Ultimately, as the study’s authors concluded, “health services grounded in a youth development framework can lead to long-term reductions in sexual risk among vulnerable youth.” But those health services may not be widely available across the country — particularly in rural areas that tend to have conservative attitudes about sex, where teens may not feel comfortable seeking out the resources they need.

    In particular, the 26 states that require health classes to push ineffective abstinence-only curricula — a misguided approach to sexual education that teaches adolescents to be ashamed of their bodies, rather than equipping young people with the tools they need to safeguard their health — would actually be better served by investing money in support programs for at-risk youth. If the U.S. reoriented its approach to teen sexuality, including acknowledging the fact that young men also have a role to play in preventing unintended pregnancies, the country could continue taking steps toward improving its relatively poor sexual health.

    Health

    Teen Pregnancy Is Most Common In Rural America, Where There May Be More Barriers To Birth Control

    By Tara Culp-Ressler on Feb 22, 2013 at 12:05 pm

    The teen birth rate is nearly one-third higher in rural areas of the United States than it is in more populous areas of the country, and teen pregnancy rates have been much slower to decline in rural counties over the past decade, according to a new study from The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. The advocacy organization notes that while no single reason explains the difference in teen birth rates across regions, adolescents in rural areas likely have particular barriers to contraceptive services.

    “The prevailing stereotype is that teen parenthood is primarily an urban and suburban phenomenon,” Bill Albert, the chief program officer for the National Campaign, told USA Today. But the group’s new data suggests that’s not actually the case.

    As the nation has increasingly focused its efforts on preventing unintended teen pregnancies, there has been significant progress. Although the U.S. still has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the developed world, teen birth rates have plunged to record lows as adolescents have begun to use more effective forms of birth control when they become sexually active. But that trend has been slower to take root in rural areas. Between 1990 and 2010, the birth rate dropped 49 percent for teens in major urban centers and 40 percent for teens in suburban areas — but just 32 percent for adolescents who live in rural counties.

    While teens across the country have largely been having less sex and using more contraception, teens in rural areas have actually been having more sex and using birth control less frequently. It’s not clear why that’s the case, but it could partly be because teens in rural areas still lack access to a range of comprehensive contraceptive services. There just aren’t as many sexual health resources in rural counties, where teens may have to travel farther to the nearest women’s health clinic. And deeply rooted attitudes about sex — including school districts that continue to cling to abstinence-only health curricula that don’t give teens enough information about methods to prevent pregnancy — may also play a role. Urban school districts, particularly in New York City, have made significant advances in expanding teens’ access to sexual education and resources, but there often aren’t similar pushes in rural places.

    The United States’ culture of sexual repression has also created an environment where teen sexuality is stigmatized, and adolescents may feel too embarrassed to seek out the resources they need. The National Campaign points out that teens may feel like they can’t buy condoms in their rural town where everyone knows their name.

    Health

    Parents Tend To Be Uncomfortable With Giving Their Teens The Most Effective Form Of Birth Control

    By Tara Culp-Ressler on Feb 14, 2013 at 3:00 pm

    Intrauterine device (IUD)

    The majority of parents want their teens’ doctors to be able to dispense birth control if they find out the adolescent has become sexually active — but, according to the results from a new study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, parents’ comfort levels and the most effective methods of contraception are in direct conflict with each other. Just 18 percent of parents would be comfortable with their teen’s doctor giving them an intrauterine device (IUD), despite the fact that doctors actually recommend that long-lasting form of birth control as the first contraceptive that should be offered to young adults.

    UC San Francisco researchers posed the following question to parents: “If your teen’s doctor found out your daughter was having sex, is it acceptable or unacceptable to you for the doctor to provide birth control to your teen confidentially?” Participants were asked to rank their comfort level with each contraceptive method — including birth control pills, condoms, emergency contraception, a birth control patch, or an IUD — on a scale from 1 to 4. Oral birth control had the most support from parents at 59 percent, condoms came in second at 51 percent, and Plan B got 45 percent. But the IUD ranked dead last, winning just 18 percent of respondents’ approval.

    That could be because parents worry about IUDs having a lasting impact on their daughters’ fertility, an issue with the contraceptive method in the 1970s that is no longer a problem today. Adults may have also bought into the misguided idea that long-lasting birth control somehow gives license to promiscuity, since it protects against pregnancy for an extended period of time. But medical experts are working to dispel the stigma surrounding IUDs — the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology already encourages doctors to offer teens long-lasting forms of contraception, since they’re the most effective way to prevent unintended pregnancies.

    But even more generally, the results from the UC California study underline the fact that adults aren’t as comfortable with addressing teens’ sexual health as they need to be. “The lower than expected acceptability of condoms likely reflects parents’ overall low acceptability of contraception in general for their daughters,” the lead researcher of the study told the Atlantic. But considering the fact that U.S. teen birth rates remain much higher than the rates in other developed countries, it’s more important than ever that young adults across the country are able to access the reproductive resources they need.

    And ultimately, the study speaks to larger societal issues surrounding sexuality, perhaps even unintentionally. The fact that researchers focused entirely on parents’ attitudes toward teenage girls, without addressing the fact that teenage boys also have a role in practicing safe sex and preventing pregnancy, reflects the fundamental gender-based imbalance in the way society approaches sex.

    Alyssa

    ‘Downton Abbey’ Open Thread: Read The Signs As Best You Can

    By Alyssa Rosenberg on Feb 11, 2013 at 9:03 am

    This post discusses plot points from the February 10 episode of Downton Abbey.

    Last night’s super-sized Downton Abbey was a bit lumpy in places—the cricket match in particular felt like it might have been a richer subject several seasons down the line when we had a better sense of who actually lives not just upstairs and downstairs, but in the village. But the combination of two episodes that aired as individual hours in the UK let Downton ground Thomas’s story in a larger context of the ways in which sexual repression poorly serves men and women alike in 1920s England. As O’Brien conspires to lure Thomas to Jimmy’s room, Edith finds herself drawn to Gregson, and Matthew worries about his potential fertility, this episode was a reminder that, medically and socially, an inability to speak honestly about sex has terrible consequences.

    Edith’s latest romantic adventures begin as professional ones. After Gregson writes her to inquire again after her availability as a columnist, she declares “I think I will go. It seems rude not to, in a way. And I haven’t been to London for ages.” Her family continues to be less than entirely supportive. As her grandmother puts it, “A woman’s place is in the home, but I see nothing wrong in her having some fun before she gets there. And another thing, Edith isn’t getting any younger. Maybe she isn’t cut out for domestic life.” But as it turns out, confining a woman to domestic life might also keep her from running across promising romantic prospects. When she and Gregson meet for lunch, Gregson admits to her “Am I allowed to say I’m pleased you’re not married?” “I’m a little less pleased,” Edith tells him. But she doesn’t leave the lunch and she takes the job—and she doesn’t quit it when Gregson remarks “You look very pretty today. I’m not sure how professional it is for me to point that out.”

    It’s a relationship that brings out the best in both of them. Edith dares not just to write, but to take on subjects that no one would have expected her, like the lack of employment opportunities for soldiers returned home from the war, not all of whom are so lucky to amble into managing an estate, as Matthew has done. “I like the idea of a woman taking a position on man’s subject,” Gregson tells her. “I think we’re on to something new, here. The mature female voice in debates.” And it’s good for them personally—to a point. Edith comes out of her shell enough to enjoy a flirtation and to talk honestly about her experience being jilted. Gregson clearly enjoys her company as a colleague and as a woman. But when she inquires into his background, she discovered not just that he’s married, but how English law has inconvenienced him. Gregson is a decent man, but there’s something profoundly unfair about the law that shackles him to his wife because she’s too mentally ill to give consent to their divorce, and there appears to be no treatment that can make her well enough to set him free. Sir Anthony hurt Edith horribly because he couldn’t bear to tell her in a definitive way that he didn’t actually feel comfortable being with her. Gregson at least finds the courage to tell her the truth, but not after leading her down a disappointing path. What happens next may depend on how comfortable Edith feels defying convention. It’s one thing for her flighty cousin to convince herself a married member of the nobility is going to leave his wife for her, and another to go into a relationship like this one with your eyes open.
    Read more

    Alyssa

    ‘Parks and Recreation’ Open Thread: Narrative Forms In The Digital World

    By Alyssa Rosenberg on Feb 8, 2013 at 9:04 am

    This post discusses plot points from the February 7 episode of Parks and Recreation.

    When you’re single, the most irritating person on the planet can be the dear friend who wants you to know that you’re so spectacular that of course everything’s going to turn out fine for you. That friend means well, but their encouragement only serves to highlight the gap in between what’s actually happening for you and what they insist should be happening, raising the possibility that a) you’re doing something wrong, b) there is a fatal flaw, c) the Gods have a sick sense of humor. And on last night’s episode of Parks and Recreation, that person was Leslie Knope.

    On finding out that Ann is not just dating herself as a way to have new experiences and thinking about what she wants in life, but is considering having a baby with a sperm donor, Leslie declared “You’re definitely going to find a wonderful man who loves you, and respects you, and fills your home with multi-ethnic genius babies.” It’s a nice vision, but it was even nicer to see Ann put paid to Leslie’s relentless optimism for her best friend. “Maybe,” Ann told Leslie. “Or maybe not.” Either way, Leslie’s dream for her best friend is beside the point. Ann doesn’t want to wait anymore, she isn’t being diverted into a different path from Leslie’s, she’s just choosing it.

    That’s both an exciting development for a character who can be passive and malleable with regard to her personal life, and as it turns out, a nice choice for the show’s larger universe. I’d been idly wishing for Crazy Ira and the Douche to Parks and Recreation, spurred in part by the debut of the Kroll Show on Comedy Central, so I was delighted to see Howard’s return to the show last night, as one of the candidates to donate sperm to Ann. And the show had a great joke for him: it turns out, to Leslie’s irritation, that he’s a relatively decent guy. “I majored in semiotics, wrote a thesis on narrative forms in the digital world,” Howard explained to Ann when she asked about his education. Leslie, still skeptical, wanted to know “Then you became a shock jock and created the sport taintball?” He shrugged it off, explaining “I know it’s a silly thing to do, but it pays the bills.” And later, he hit all of Leslie’s buttons when she tracked him down in the parking garage. “I’ve thought a lot about having kids. It’s the next big step in this grand adventure we call life,” Howard explained. “You know, if we had a little girl, I’d name her Elizabeth, after my grandmother. She was this strong, amazing woman.”
    Read more

    Health

    New York City’s Teen Pregnancy Rate Plummeted After High Schools Expanded Access To Plan B

    By Tara Culp-Ressler on Feb 4, 2013 at 4:45 pm

    The teen pregnancy rate in New York City dropped by 27 percent over the last decade, a statistic that city officials credit to teens’ expanded access to contraception.

    The city’s health commissioner, Tom Farley, told the New York Daily News that the data shows two concurrent trends: more adolescents are choosing to use birth control, and more of them are also delaying sexual intercourse. That’s partly because New York is one of the 21 states that allows all minors to have access to contraceptive services — and two years ago, the public school system began a pilot program to provide Plan B to public school students in districts with high rates of unintended pregnancy:

    The city has worked to make it easier for kids to get birth control — giving out condoms at schools and making birth control and the morning-after pill available in some school clinics, a sometimes controversial move.

    Farley said the numbers show that strategy is working.

    “It shows that when you make condoms and contraception available to teens, they don’t increase their likelihood of being sexually active. But they get the message that sex is risky,” he said. [...]

    Teen pregnancy in the city is still higher than it is nationwide, but it has fallen at a sharper rate, officials said.

    Despite the promising trends, health officials in the city note that there are still significant racial and geographic disparities among the teens who are getting pregnant. The Bronx has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the country, and African-American teens in New York City have a much higher pregnancy rate than their white counterparts — 110.7 births for every 1,000 back girls, compared with 16 births for every 1,000 white girls. That trend is evident on a national level, too. Black and Latina women have the highest rates of unplanned pregnancy and, subsequently, the highest rates of abortion.

    But the city’s school system is on the right track, since part of addressing the connection between poverty and teen pregnancy is increasing access to affordable birth control. Removing the cost barriers to contraception encourages low-income women to choose longer-lasting, more effective forms of birth control that lower their risk for unintended pregnancy. And increasing adolescents’ access to Plan B is particularly important since the Department of Health and Human Services requires women under the age of 17 to obtain a prescription for Plan B, an unnecessary extra step that is often a barrier preventing adolescents from accessing the contraception they need in a timely manner.

    Despite right-wing fervor over Plan B, it is an extremely safe medication that does not actually induce abortion. The majority of parents whose children are enrolled in New York City’s public schools support the city’s initiative to expand access to this type of contraception.

    Older

    Switch to Mobile
    ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

    Sign Up