In December 2022, Congress passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), a pro-life bill that aimed to make the workplace more accessible to pregnant women by requiring employers to provide accommodations to pregnant workers under The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This bill was implemented at the end of June 2023.
The PWFA requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations to a worker’s known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless the accommodation will cause the employer an undue hardship.” However, the bill does not define what is considered a “reasonable accommodation,” or what is considered a “related medical condition.”
Although the measure was meant to help and support pregnant women, Biden officials are manipulating it to promote abortion.
As a result, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced a new rule last week that would warp and twist the federal law to impose pro-abortion regulations on virtually every employer in the country, even those whose religious beliefs dictate that life begins at conception.
Now, America’s Catholic bishops are blasting Biden’s new pro-abortion rule, which is set to take effect 60 days from its publication on Friday.
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Responding to the new rule on Friday, Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, Bishop Kevin Rhoades said in a statement that “no employer should be forced to participate in an employee’s decision to end the life of their child.”
“The bipartisan Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, as written, is a pro-life law that protects the security and physical health of pregnant mothers and their preborn children,” Rhoades, the chairman of the USCCB’s Committee for Religious Liberty, said in the statement.
“It is indefensible for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to twist the law in a way that violates the consciences of pro-life employers by making them facilitate abortions,” the prelate argued.
The USCCB had last year submitted comments on the proposed rule in which the bishops, along with the Catholic University of America, argued that the PWFA “does not require the provision of any benefit for purposes of facilitating an abortion.”
“The intent of the PWFA is to require accommodations for ‘pregnancy,’ ‘childbirth,’ and ‘related medical conditions’ — in other words, to assist pregnant workers and workers giving birth to a child by providing accommodations that would permit them to continue to remain both gainfully employed and healthily pregnant,” the bishops and the school argued in the comments.
“Abortion is neither pregnancy nor childbirth,” they argued. “And it is not ‘related’ to pregnancy or childbirth as those terms are used in the PWFA because it intentionally ends pregnancy and prevents childbirth.”
A leading pro-life legal group also condemned Biden’s pro-abortion rule.
“This rule is just the latest example of the Biden administration abusing its power to advance abortion,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake told LifeNews.com.
She said, “The new rule seeks to punish the speech of pro-life employers and restrict their hiring practices. The Biden administration and the EEOC don’t have the legal authority to smuggle this illegitimate rule into a law that was created to protect and support women and that had nothing to do with abortion.”
Here’s more on what the Biden administration is doing:
In the case of the PWFA, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was given rulemaking authority. In July, the rules were released, and they directly contradicted the intent of Congress. Not only was “reasonable accommodation” interpreted to include additional paid leave, but the EEOC included abortion in the definition of “related medical conditions.” The PWFA would now essentially require employers to provide medical leave for women to end the life of their child through an abortion.
Such rulemaking directly contradicts the intent of Congress and the pro-life advocacy groups who hoped the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would help mothers choose life.
The bill’s primary Democratic sponsor, Sen. Casey, assured pro-life organizations that the bill was “straightforward … [and would] allow pregnant workers to request reasonable accommodations so that they can continue working safely during pregnancy and upon returning to work after childbirth.”
The bill’s primary Republican sponsor, Sen. Cassidy, echoed those assurances and strongly opposed the EEOC’s actions saying, “These regulations completely disregard legislative intent and attempt to rewrite the law by regulation…The decision to disregard the legislative process to inject a political abortion agenda is illegal and deeply concerning.”
These statements alone should unequivocally eliminate abortion from being considered a pregnancy related medical condition.
It is clear that the intent of Congress in passing the PWFA was to help pregnant mothers have healthy pregnancies and babies, not to expand access to abortion.
