By Sarah Casteel, Clayton High School senior, St. Louis MO<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

While our society still faces sex-based workplace discrimination \u2014 clearly most often targeted at women \u2014 one would still think that enough progress has been made to accommodate mommies-to-be.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, recent evaluations reveal that an outbreak of workplace discrimination complaints has occurred among pregnant women.<\/span><\/p>\n

SEE THIS: \u00a0<\/span>Bobbi Bockoras, Breastfeeding Mom, Allegedly Forced By Employer To Pump On Dirty Floor<\/span><\/a> \u2013 via \u00a0Huffington Post last week.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Despite our celebration just weeks ago of the 35th Anniversary of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, a law which prevents employers from\u00a0\u201ctreating a woman (an applicant or employee) unfavorably because of pregnancy, childbirth, or a medical condition related to pregnancy or childbirth,\u201d women are still very much at risk of being forced to take unpaid leave, or even of being fired, because their employers will not accommodate for their relatively temporary circumstance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under the PDA, an employer who allows temporarily disabled employees to take disability leave or provides them with any other disability benefits must consider pregnancy to fall within these qualifications.\u00a0 Yet, regardless of what the law says, pregnancy discrimination persists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Members of Congress were prompted to construct this pregnancy protection Act by two Supreme Court decisions in the 70\u2019s:<\/span><\/p>\n

Geduldig v. Aiello (1973)\u00a0<\/b>Carolyn Aiello, a California resident, was temporarily disabled due to pregnancy \u2014 but the state\u2019s Unemployment Insurance Code denied benefits to females in this predicament.\u00a0 Aiello came together with other women who had been denied the same benefits and challenged this section of the Code as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.\u00a0 Ultimately, in a 6-3 decision, the Court upheld the statute, claiming that adding pregnancy to disability insurance would be \u201cextraordinarily expensive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

General Electric Co. v. Gilbert (1976)\u00a0<\/b>Similar to the previous case, this case was about whether or not employers could legally exclude conditions related to pregnancy from employee disability, sickness and accident benefits.\u00a0 Disregarding the several lower court decisions holding that excluding pregnancy from a health plan violated the gender discrimination section the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Court ruled in favor of General Electric.\u00a0 Justice Rehnquist pointed out that \u2014 get this \u2014 pregnancy differs from other conditions because it is often \u201cvoluntarily undertaken and desired.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, this makes sense, because we know that\u00a0nearly every<\/i>\u00a0pregnant woman consciously chose to become pregnant and desires to have a child at that point in her life.\u00a0 Just kidding.\u00a0 According to the Guttmacher Institute, between 37-70% of pregnancies in the United States are unintended.<\/span><\/p>\n

Women complaining of this sex-based discrimination should have just gotten cosmetic surgery \u2014 at least that would have been covered by the plan. \u00a0Yeah, right.<\/span><\/p>\n

The question now is, what can we do to stop this ridiculous, antiquated discrimination from continuing?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Well, we could always move to Germany \u2014 their maternity leave plan guarantees mommy AND daddy (or, you know, mommy and mommy) a 3 year\u00a0job-protected<\/i>\u00a0leave following the birth of their child.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, such a policy will most likely never be taken up in good ol\u2019 America.\u00a0 However, Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania has got our backs, ladies.\u00a0 He introduced (and re-introduced after it died last year) the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would\u00a0\u201c\u2026 eliminate discrimination and promote women\u2019s health and economic security by ensuring reasonable workplace accommodations for workers whose ability to perform the functions of a job are limited by pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition.\u201d\u00a0 Essentially, the law would close any loophole, induced by court decisions, allowing employers to discriminate against pregnant women.\u00a0 The goal is not only to ensure the woman\u2019s job safety, but to ensure reasonable accommodations while working and while on maternity leave.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, while some of you ladies may jump at the sight of pink, our goal right now is to make sure the pink slip disappears from our country forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0As the\u00a0This Is Personal<\/i>\u00a0campaign claims, \u201cNo woman should have to choose between endangering her pregnancy and keeping her job.\u201d \u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to tell your members of Congress to support the PWF now.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Republished, by permission, from Progress Women.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sarah Casteel, Clayton High School senior, St. Louis MO While our society still faces sex-based workplace discrimination \u2014 clearly most often targeted at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":639,"featured_media":26588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[767,1315,255,29,994,869,45,1453,113,1170,877],"tags":[2113,1449],"yoast_head":"\n