Should employers be legally forced to ‘accommodate’ pregnant employees? No. I’m as pro-life and pro-pregnancy as they come, but these sorts of regulations and impositions on employers have gotten completely out of hand.
I asked you about your opinion on this story a couple of days ago. If you missed it, here’s the recap: this week, the Supreme Court is hearing the case of a woman who sued UPS because the company wouldn’t assign her to light duty when she became pregnant. They offered to put her on medical leave, which she accepted, but then proceeded to sue them for pregnancy discrimination. To be clear, in this case, the woman was already on leave to undergo fertility treatments. So she was asking UPS to give her leave for the fertility treatments, then light duty for nine months afterwards, then maternity leave, then she wanted to be handed her old job back. If you listen to many feminist groups and, oddly, pro-life groups, UPS ought to be legally required to do just that.
Make no mistake, if she wins this Supreme Court case it could be devastating to both employers, especially smaller ones, and women, because this will make hiring women of child bearing age a risk not worth taking.
We need to stop crying about our ‘rights’ every time something doesn’t turn out the way we wanted. We need to stop crying ‘discrimination’ every time our employer doesn’t give us the special treatment we desire. We need to stop trying to turn everything into a federal regulation. If you think employers have a moral obligation to accommodate pregnant women — fine. I agree, to a certain extent. But it can’t become a legal obligation:
Join the conversation!
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.