Help Us Fight Back Against Efforts to Roll Back Gender Justice
Extremist judges will not stop endangering the lives of pregnant people or people who may become pregnant—overturning Roe v. Wade, attacking medication abortion, threatening the future of IVF, and this week at SCOTUS, emergency abortion care.
Our lawyers are waging strategic fights that make clear what is at stake for people who can become pregnant and seek to bolster our fundamental rights to control our lives, futures, and destinies.
Make a donation to the National Women’s Law Center to power the fight for accessible health care and a better future for all. Every donation is 100% tax-deductible.
No #FalseChoice Here: Let’s Give Workers the Paid Leave They Deserve
Why are Republican lawmakers telling us we have to make a choice between financial security when we temporarily leave work to have a child or care for a sick family member, or financial security when we retire?
You shouldn’t have to – because it’s a #FalseChoice.
Lack of sufficient paid leave is bad for the physical and mental health of workers and their families. New parents and their babies experience increased stress when parents aren’t able to take any paid time to care for and bond with their newborns, or to recuperate themselves. Parents need to take time to care for children with disabilities or health issues beyond birth, too. Paid leave is critical in these situations: data shows that the presence of a parent shortens a critically ill child’s hospital stay by 31 percent.
Parents aren’t the only ones who need paid family leave. Caring for family members affects people across the spectrum. A recent study found that millennials spend 21 hours per week on family caregiving duties, and 73 percent of them do it while also working at a job. Women are more likely than men to serve as primary caregivers, and are particularly likely to need paid time off to meet their own or their family’s medical needs. All of this means that when serious personal or family health needs inevitably arise, people face impossible choices between their families’ well-being, their own health and financial security, and their jobs.
The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee paid family leave to workers, and voters realize that we need to catch up. The good news is, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are starting to understand that paid family leave is vital for workers and their families, so people don’t have to make these impossible choices. Legislation in Washington and Massachusetts was passed with bipartisan support that will provide paid family and medical leave to workers in those states.
In response to this growing momentum, the U.S. Senate Finance Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy held a hearing examining the importance of paid family leavefor working families. At the hearing, there was bipartisan support for the idea that in the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, workers should be able to temporarily take time away from work to welcome a child or care for themselves or a sick family member.
Under the Republican-backed plan, women who need to take paid parental leave now will be punished down the road when they need to access their retirement benefits. This is not the best we can do as a nation. Workers, their families, and businesses in this country deserve better. In contrast, the FAMILY Act is a real solution that would help women and families to balance work and life responsibilities. It will bolster economic security by leaving our Social Security program intact. It will help to create a stronger and healthier workforce. It will be good for businesses large and small. And, bonus: it doesn’t force women, or any workers, to make a gut wrenching #FalseChoice to either jeopardize the health of their families, or their own retirement security. That’s a plan we can all get behind.