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States are #FightingForFamilies by Ensuring Bosses Can’t Discriminate Against Employees for Their Reproductive Health Decisions
Women across the country have been punished, threatened, or fired for using birth control, for undergoing in vitro fertilization in order to get pregnant, for having an abortion, or for even having sex without being married.
You know what we say to that?
Employers shouldn’t be allowed to use their personal religious beliefs to discriminate against employees. Women, not their bosses, should get to decide when, whether, and how to prevent a pregnancy or start a family. And they shouldn’t be fired or discriminated against for that decision.
When a woman is fired, loses her job, or isn’t promoted because her boss disagrees with her private, personal decisions about childbearing, she and her entire family face not only an immediate loss of income but potentially years of decreased earnings and job stability. Such discrimination may keep women from being able to make the decision about how to limit or grow and sustain their families that is best for them.
Thankfully, states across the country have stepped up to #FightForFamilies by introducing legislation that makes it clear bosses cannot obstruct or coerce an employee when that employee makes a personal reproductive health care decision.
These important anti-discrimination protections have been enacted in the District of Columbia and Delaware. In 2017, the California Legislature passed protections for employees, but it was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown.
And so far in 2018, Washington, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and Missouri have introduced bills to protect employees from discrimination based on their reproductive health decisions.
No person should have to worry about losing their job because of their reproductive health decisions. And we’re thrilled to see that state’s continue to #FightForFamilies by protecting employees so that they can make their own personal decisions, including whether and when to use birth control and whether and when to have children.