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Report: Black Women in Texas Are Dying From Pregnancy and Child Birth at an Alarming Rate

Posted on October 28, 2017

A recent United Nations-funded in-depth report in the LA Times this week state that black women in Texas are dying from pregnancy and childbirth at an increasingly alarming rate. These following passages stand out:

Every year, around 700 women in the United States die as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications. As many as 60,000 expectant mothers suffer problems that come close to costing them their lives.

America is one of the most developed nations in the world. Average life expectancy has been generally increasing over at least the last five decades, and deaths from illnesses that were once widely fatal, including polio, small pox, tuberculosis and AIDS, are sharply falling.

Yet when it comes to the natural process of childbearing, women in the U.S. die in much higher numbers than those in most developed nations, where maternal deaths are generally declining.

A woman in the U.S., where the maternal death ratio more than doubled between 1987 and 2013, is more likely to die as a result of pregnancy-related causes than in 31 industrialized countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, aside from Mexico.

There are various theories why — persistent poverty, large numbers of women without adequate health insurance, risk factors related to stress and discrimination. All come together here in Texas, with a twist that has become one of America’s most confounding public health problems: African American women are dying of pregnancy- and childbirth-related causes here at stunningly high rates.

The maternal death rate in Texas after 2010 reached “levels not seen in other U.S. states,” according to a report compiled for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, based on figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Black women in Texas are dying at the highest rates of all. A 2016 joint report by Texas’ Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force and Department of State Health Services found that black mothers accounted for 11.4% of Texas births in 2011 and 2012, but 28.8% of pregnancy-related deaths.

“This is a crisis,” said Marsha Jones, executive director of the Afiya Center, a Dallas-based nonprofit that has taken on the issue. In May, the center published its first report: “We Can’t Watch Black Women Die.”

continue reading the entire piece. It’s worth it.

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News

Teacher Sues Public School Over Out-of-Wedlock Pregnancy Firing

Posted on August 4, 2017

A former special education teacher at Grinnell Elementary School is suing the Derry Cooperative School District, claiming she was fired because she was pregnant.

Sarah McLean of Dover filed a four-count civil lawsuit this week in Rockingham County Superior Court alleging pregnancy discrimination, wrongful termination, retaliation and violation of the Family Medical Leave Act.

The suit names the school district and School Administrative Unit 10 as defendants.

According to the suit, McLean was hired on April 13, 2015, for the $51,595 per-year position and let go at the end of the school year on June 30, 2016, due to the pregnancy “and/or the perceived inconvenience of her being pregnant and needing maternity leave.”

The school district has not yet responded to the suit. Interim Superintendent Mary Ann Connors-Krikorian and school board Chairman Dan McKenna did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the case.

McLean claims that during her one year at the district she received “generally positive performance reviews” and never faced disciplinary action.

McLean, who is represented by Manchester attorney Sean List, learned that she was pregnant during the early winter and informed principal Mary Hill of her pregnancy on Jan. 4, 2016, the suit said.

She also disclosed the pregnancy to some colleagues, the suit said, including one who inquired about when she would be getting married.

The questions about marriage made McLean “uncomfortable” because the colleague “seemed to disapprove of Ms. McLean’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy,” the suit said.

McLean claims that between December 2015 and February 2016 she took a half-day of sick time for an “urgent OB/GYN issue” and left an hour early on two occasions for medical appointments related to the pregnancy. The suit said she had enough sick and vacation time to cover the absences.

The second time she asked to leave early for an appointment, McLean claims that the assistant principal expressed concern that if the requests became regular “the students would miss out on instruction.”

During a regular review meeting in March 2016, the suit said McLean told Hill that she would be taking her 12-week maternity leave after her baby was born on the expected due date of July 11, 2016.

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News

Judge rules against nonprofit with a ‘No Pregnancy At Work’ policy

Posted on May 31, 2015

A federal judge ordered a non profit to pay a former employee $75,000 after it fired her for violating the organization’s “no pregnancy in the workplace.”

The United Bible Fellowship Ministries, Inc. provides housing for people with disabilities and has a policy in place stating that any woman who becomes pregnant will be fired and no pregnant woman applying for the position as a resource technician should be hired.

Even though Sharmira Johnson performed her job with care and her pregnancy didn’t restrict her from carrying out her duties, the organization fired her arguing it was doing it to ensure her safety and that of her unborn baby and its clients.

Johnson brought lawsuit to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the case eventually wound up before U.S. District Court Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore.

She found the organization’s argument didn’t hold up, finding that United Bible “recklessly” failed to comply with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on sex, race, religion, and other characteristics, by having the anti-pregnancy policy.

The organization was contracted with the state of Texas which also requires compliance with its anti-discrimination laws, and the court said the group failed to show that all pregnant women are unable to perform their duties safely.

The judge awarded Johnson about $25,000 in back pay and overtime plus interest, as well as $50,000 in damages for emotional and mental suffering.

This case was easier to order because United Bible had such a blatant policy on its books but there are hundreds of other companies and groups that try to circumvent anti-pregnancy discriminatory actions by claiming pregnancy impairs women’s ability to do their jobs. Those policies are based on archaic and outdated notions about pregnancy.

Read more about the suit at the EEOC website HERE!

photo: StockImages

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BumpNews

Lesbian woman fired for unwed pregnancy sues Catholic church

Posted on August 22, 2014

Sheaela Evenson (right) and her partner Marilyn Tobin (left) welcomed their baby boy on March 7

The same attorney who got an Ohio teacher fired for an unwed pregnancy a $170,000 jury award is now representing a former Montana Catholic school teacher recently fired for being pregnant while unmarried.

Shaela Evenson filed the lawsuit Thursday alleging the firing violated federal and state laws that prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy.

Evenson was a 9 year veteran teacher and taught 6th to 8th grade literature and physical education at Butte Central Elementary-Junior High School in Helena. She was fired in January after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena received an anonymous letter about her pregnancy.

Evenson became pregnant through artificial insemination and gave birth to a boy on March 7, the first child for Evenson and her partner, Marilyn Tobin.

The district said it fired Evenson for violating the terms of her contract, which required her to practice the tenets of the Catholic faith.

um….I guess Evenson concealed the fact she was a Lesbian to them too, huh? She is in a committed relationship with another woman in a state where same-sex marriage is illegal, and working for an institution that does not believe in same sex marriage. They didn’t see this coming?

Evenson’s lawyer represented Christa Dias who successfully sued the Roman Catholic Cincinnati archdioceses.

Your thoughts?

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BumpNews

New EEOC guidance: Employers must provide lactation rooms; Can offer abortion; treats pregnancy like a disabilty

Posted on July 16, 2014

The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a groundbreaking ruling Enforcement Guidance today clarifying the nation’s pregnancy discrimination rules. The EEOC decided and noted, among other things:

1. Employers must give women who are pregnant the same flexibility and accommodations as they provide for disabled and ill employees. So, for example, if an employer provides an employee who has a back injury or some other movement limiting disability “light duty” to accommodate their limitations, he or she should provide similar adjustments for women who are pregnant.

2. Employers cannot judge work-limitations due to pregnancy in a different light that it would consider limitations caused by an injury or sudden illness.

3. Violations of the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to provide suitable places for women to pump their breast milk is also a violation of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

4. Employers are guilty of stereotyping when they decide to not hire, promote or give a pregnant woman a task based on their biased perception she would be able to perform her duties well after she delivers her baby.

5. Employers cannot fire a woman returning from maternity leave just because a pregnant woman was on maternity leave; neither can they fire a woman while she is on maternity leave.

6. Employers cannot exclude birth control from medical policies unless they fall under rules exceptions. This one is a dig at the recent U.S. Supreme Court cases exempting certain employers from complying with the AHA birth control laws. But it went further, to clarify, that an employer CAN include abortion in its plan if it wants.

Not all, including some of the Commissioners on the panel agreed with the majority’s decision, arguing that treating pregnancy like a disability is an insult to the disability community. Read the reply to those in the minority of this decision from Commissioner Chai Feldblum HERE!

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Tips

7 Things You Should NEVER Say to Your Pregnant Co-Worker

Posted on September 19, 2019

Several years back, I did a segment on a local TV show with 10 things people should avoid saying or doing to a pregnant woman they come in contact with.

Pregnancy is a stressful time for many women. Expecting mamas are considered “community property” in that the general public feel a certain amount of affection towards them. At work, moms-to-be are trying to navigate work expectations, stay on track, make adjustments to accommodate fatigue, morning sickness and in the early stages keep the news under wraps.

The US outlaws pregnancy discrimination at work outright, but many pregnant women say there are subtle ways even the most well-intentioned coworkers can make them feel ostracized.

Business Insider published an article this week with a list of 7 things HR professionals and other experts recommend people. avoid saying to their pregnant co-worker:

——-

Some comments, like asking the baby’s gender, might seem well intentioned but come across as invasive. Other questions can make pregnant women feel alienated and might even discourage them from returning to the same job.

Here are seven things you should never say to a pregnant coworker — plus tips on what you should say.

Wow! You’re Getting Big

Comments regarding a woman — or anyone’s — body are never allowed in the workplace, said Alison Green, the creator of the popular work advice site Ask a Manager.

“No one wants to feel her colleagues are scrutinizing her body,” Green told Business Insider.

Additionally, pregnant women may already be anxious about their baby’s growth, as well as getting used to normal bodily changes that happen, said Lynn Taylor, workplace expert and author of “Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job” Taylor also designs belts that help pregnant women feel more comfortable during these physical changes.

“Being pregnant in the office is a sensitive time in terms of what you hear from your coworkers,” Taylor told Business Insider. “I think most people in this nine-month period just want to be treated like your average employee, so try not to treat them very differently.”

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The U.S. Workplace Is Still Hostile to Pregnant Workers

Posted on June 18, 2018

U.S. companies have spent years trying to become more welcoming to women. They have rolled out generous parental leave policies, designed cushy lactation rooms and plowed millions of dollars into programs aimed at retaining mothers.

But these advances haven’t changed a simple fact: Whether women work at Walmart or on Wall Street, getting pregnant is often the moment they are knocked off the professional ladder.

Throughout the U.S. workplace, pregnancy discrimination remains widespread. It can start as soon as a woman is showing, and it often lasts through her early years as a mother.

The New York Times reviewed thousands of pages of court and public records and interviewed dozens of women, their lawyers and government officials. A clear pattern emerged. Many of the country’s largest and most prestigious companies still systematically sideline pregnant women. They pass them over for promotions and raises. They fire them when they complain.

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BumpNews

There’s an App Some Companies Use that Tracks When a Female Employee has Stopped Filling Her Birth Control Prescriptions

Posted on February 21, 2016

Some companies, including Walmart, are hiring third-party firms like Castlight Healthcare Inc. to help them reduce their health care costs. Concern is that some of this “help” includes tracking when a woman has stopped filling her birth-control prescriptions and made fertility-related searches on Castlight’s health app.

An article in the Wall Street Journal this week stated that the collected data about employees help employers calculate people’s risks of certain health conditions. It scared a bunch of folks, especially on the Internet, who thought the app was a set up for pregnancy discrimination.

You could imagine the part about the app sending alerts about one’s personal and private moves sounds invasive and scary!

But it turns out the alerts are sent to the employees who are then “nudged” to make healthier choices that could lower their (and their employer’s) health care costs in the long run.

Data collected from the app is matched with the woman’s age, and if applicable, the ages of her children to compute the likelihood of an impending pregnancy, Castlight’s chief research and development officer Jonathan Rende, Castlight said. She would then start receiving emails or in-app messages with tips for choosing an obstetrician or other prenatal care. If the algorithm guessed wrong, she could opt out of receiving similar messages.

The employers only receive data in the aggregate and stripped form any personal-identifiable information.

Still, people think about that Target incident a few years ago, where the big box store used big data marketing analysis to send women who didn’t even know if they were pregnant yet coupons for baby products. Infamously, a father got a teen daughter’s baby coupons and learned before the teen could tell her dad that she thought she could be pregnancy.

These data-mining platforms are risky because sensitive health data is at risk of breaches and hackers, worse than a boss knowing that you’re looking to get pregnant in the near future.

It still pretty scary stuff!

h/t Vox

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BumpNews

Breastfeeding & Pumping at Work: Know Your Rights

Posted on September 5, 2014

Many American women do not yet know that the current US federal law states about what rights women have to pump their milk at work; and what accommodations they are entitled to get from their employers.

Tom Spiggle, author of “You’re Pregnant? You’re Fired!,” who focuses on pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, says that if you are breastfeeding your child, the right to pump milk at work under federal law remains a bit complicated. The Affordable Care Act of 2010, also known as Obamacare, requires employers to allow women to pump breast milk while they are at work, but like many federal regulations covering American workers, it’s shot through with loopholes.

“For the first time, women constitute more than half of the workforce and the fastest growing `segment is women with children under the age of three,” says Spiggle. “Although many workplaces now provide lactation rooms and staggered breaks for breastfeeding mothers, they’re often doing so voluntarily as a good business practice to help retain female employees and not as a matter of law. And a good business practice it is.”

Spiggle says the good news is if a woman is covered under the law, her employer must provide a “reasonable break time” to pump milk each time you need to during the day, which is typically every few hours. That includes any time she would need to retrieve and use any type of breast pump. She must also be given a private space that is not a bathroom where she won’t be bothered by coworkers or customers. (It doesn’t necessarily have to be a dedicated lactation room, however.)

The bad news is a woman’s breast-pumping time doesn’t have to be paid, unless her coworkers also get paid breaks. And not everyone is covered by the new law. For starters, employers only have to meet the requirement if they have 50 or more employees, but as it turns out, only three percent of America’s small businesses (defined as those with fewer than 500 workers) fit that definition in 2010. A company with fewer than 50 employees must comply with the law unless it can prove that it would be an “undue hardship” to do so. The Department of Labor has made it clear that this standard is a very high hurdle to meet.

Also, only those women who are “non-exempt” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) are covered. The FLSA is a complicated law, but non-exempt employees are generally hourly workers who must be paid overtime. If you make more than $455 a week and have any supervisory responsibility, you may be exempt and therefore not covered by the breastfeeding law. This big loophole leaves out a lot of breastfeeding mothers.

“In a perfect world, bosses would be understanding and accommodate nursing moms’ needs during those few months when they are pumping milk,” adds Spiggle. “After all, few people dispute the benefits of breastfeeding for babies. It’s healthier than formula, not to mention cheaper.”

Good review! Hope this clears everything up.

photo: Reuters

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BumpNews

Top 5 Best Cities to live in while Pregnant

Posted on May 10, 2014

The US lags behind other developed nations in its laws that protect expecting parents.

In fact, where you live could have a substantial impact on your legal rights at work, says Tom Spiggle, founder of The Spiggle Law Firm, a family and pregnancy discrimination practice.

“Certainly all states are covered by federal law, which includes the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, but even this law only covers employers that have 15 or more employees—and courts are split on what rights this act provides,” Spiggle says. “Courts have held that employers don’t have to make minor accommodations at work—like allowing women to carry a water bottle to stay hydrated—to allow pregnant women to keep working.”

Fortunately, adds Spiggle, author of the upcoming “You’re Pregnant? You’re Fired: Protecting Mothers, Fathers, and Other Caregivers in the Workplace” (www.yourepregnantyourefired.com) “a lot of states and cities are stepping up to fill the gap.”

Here is Spiggle’s listing of the top 5 cities with the best policies and laws for working women who are pregnant:

1. New York City, N.Y.

In 2013, New York City passed amendments to its Human Rights Law that require employers with four or more employees to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant women to allow them to continue to work through their pregnancy. This protection is broader than both the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the New York State Human Rights Law. But here’s the kicker that gets NYC first-place billing: it requires employers with five or more employees to provide up to 40 hours of paid sick leave to care for themselves or certain family members.

So, if you are pregnant and your doctor tells you to avoid lifting heavy objects, if you live in NYC, your employer will have to accommodate that restriction. If you’ve also got a toddler at home who comes down with the flu and can’t go to daycare, you can also get some paid leave to stay home for a few days. If you lived in a state like Virginia, your employer could fire you for refusing to come to work under those same circumstances.

2. San Francisco, Calif.

Pregnant women in California are protected from discrimination by the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. In addition, the Act requires that employers must provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees when supported by a health care provider. On top of that, a pregnant woman in San Francisco can get up to nine days of paid sick leave and cannot be discriminated against for taking leave.

With one of the oldest paid-sick-day laws in the nation (passed in 2006), San Francisco has demonstrated that providing for paid sick leave does not negatively affect the economy.

3. Newark, N.J.

In 2014, New Jersey amended its Law Against Discrimination to specifically provide protections for pregnant women who need an accommodation to continue to work. In passing this law, the New Jersey legislature found that pregnant women are at particular risk of suffering from discrimination. The law notes that the following constitute reasonable accommodations: bathroom breaks; breaks for increased water intake; periodic rest; assistance with manual labor; job restructuring or modified work schedules; and temporary transfers to less strenuous or hazardous work. It gets even better if you live in Newark. This year the city passed a law providing that employees in a company with 10 or more employees can receive up to five days of paid sick leave. Employees at companies with fewer than 10 employees can receive up to three days of paid leave.

4. Honolulu, Hawaii

Hawaii provides broad workplace protectionsto pregnant women, including the right to workplace accommodations, it protects even part-time employees. Plus, you get to live in Hawaii.

5. Philadelphia, Pa.

As of 2014, a pregnant woman in Philadelphiais entitled to receive a reasonable accommodation at work to allow her to continue working. This applies to any employer that employs at least one employee who is not a relative.

“There are several other states and localities worth noting that have that have done, or have legislation pending, to protect pregnant employees,” added Spiggle. “They include Maryland, Alaska, Connecticut, Texas, West Virginia, Louisiana and Illinois.”

If you’re not living in one of these states, move there soon or read up on your protections in your city and good luck to ya!

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