Why Most Women Can’t Afford to Go on Bed Rest
August 19th, 2010I recently commented on a blog post by a fellow mom blogger CourtroomMama. I really appreciated her blog post, commenting on and explaining the appellant victory of Samantha Burton and the ACLU which overturned a court decision that had ordered Ms. Burton to go on prescribed bed rest for pregnancy complications.
In March of 2009 a Florida court ordered Samantha Burton to go on prescribed bed rest as her doctor recommended due to complications with her pregnancy. Burton, a single mother with two living children had refused to go on bed rest citing that she could not afford to be out of work, unpaid and not able to provide for her family for the estimated 15 remaining weeks of her pregnancy. The ruling implied the court didn’t care about her right to make her own health decisions or her current children, but sought to protect her unborn child. To add insult to injury, Burton was also ordered to submit to any and all “medically necessary” treatments including cesarean section. Sadly, Burton delivered a stillborn baby several days into her bed rest. In August of 2009, The ACLU filed an Amicus Brief, i.e. a court appeal, on Ms. Burton’s behalf. This August, 2010, Burton and the ACLU won their appeal. The ACLU cited that the previous ruling had misused the “Best Interest of the Child” standard, applying it to an unborn fetus when it is typically reserved for issues of juvenile court involving “living” children.
I really encourage every one reading this blog to take a look at CourtroomMama’s post. She has done a really nice job of making legal jargon understandable for us commoners and she raises some very interesting questions as “food for thought” that we all should be heartily considering when it comes to maternity leave.
What struck me most about this Florida ruling and other rulings and declarations that rule in favor of “protecting an unborn child” is how the mothers in all of these cases are essentially reduced to a gestational vessels-their lives, their interests and sometimes even their health is subjugated in favor of the unborn child. In the Florida case, Ms. Burton clearly stated that she could not afford to be out of work for 15 weeks as she would be unable to pay for and care for her two living children. That was not a persuasive enough argument. Nor was the fact that ordering her to submit to medical treatments against her will was a flagrant violation of her civil rights. The court and Ms. Burton’s OB implied via this case and its ruling,
“You are incapable of making decisions regarding the health and well being of you and your child, so we are taking your right to make your own medical decisions-and your right to make decisions regarding how you will care for yourself and your family-out of your hands.”
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated court case and nor an isolated situation in which a woman’s rights are trounced in favor of the rights of someone else. The fuel of the abortion argument as well as the controversy surrounding the usage of emergency birth control, is whether or not a woman has the right to decide when she will carry a pregnancy and hence control her health and her body. I was completely outraged when Republican Senate Candidate Sharron Angel (R-NV) stated that women should never be allowed to have an abortion, even in the case of rape. Within the course of with Alan Stock, Ms. Angle made her infamous statement that women should take these “lemon” situations and make “lemonade.”
Besides being one of the most insensitive and ignorant statements I have ever heard of, I’d like Ms. Angle and others opposed to abortion, morning after contraception, voluntary sterilization and other medical treatments available to women that allow them to control when they choose to become pregnant to consider the fact that while they are telling women to have the children that they did not intend to conceive, they offer no tangible ways for these women to support themselves through the pregnancy and birth process. While some men share the responsibility of unintended pregnancy with their partners, many more who get their partners pregnant simply walk away taking no responsibility for the well being of the woman or unborn child. So with this being the case, is it any wonder that women are making what many would deem “radical decisions” regarding their health and the health of their unborn children?
The United States makes few provisions for women, especially single women, to provide for themselves and their unborn children. Instead we choose to point fingers and make the case that women should not even have sex outside of marriage. At the core of Samantha’s Burton’s case is the fact that United States is one of few if not the only Western nation that offers no paid maternity leave, no professional home attendance after a woman gives birth and little to no assistance with childcare. (For more on how poorly the US compares to other countries, take a look at the THE WORK, FAMILY, AND EQUITY INDEX-WHERE DOES THE UNITED STATES STAND GLOBALLY? report)
Whether a woman is single or in a stable relationship, our workforce rules and regulations are antiquated. Back in the early to mid 1900’s when many of our workforce rules were put in place, the majority of employees were men and those women who were working, typically did so only until they started their families, then they stayed home and raised their children. But clearly this is no longer the case. According to the US Department of Labor,
- Of the 122 million women age 16 years and over in the U.S., 72 million, or 59.2 percent, were labor force participants—working or looking for work.
- Women comprised 46.8 percent of the total U.S. labor force and are projected to account for 46.9 percent of the labor force in 2018.
- Women are projected to account for 51.2 percent of the increase in total labor force growth between 2008 and 2018.
The rules governing the workplace are no longer applicable to today’s workforce. Ladies, why do we stand for them?
Women are capable of making wise medical decisions. They are also capable of holding down full time jobs while taking care of themselves and their families. The laws governing personal rights and freedoms must be applied to women (as guaranteed by the constitution of the United States)-even if women make unpopular decisions or decisions that those in authority don’t understand. Women have the legal right to make those choices.
Likewise, Department of Labor and other workforce organizations need to re-evaluate the workforce, paying close attention to how the American family has evolved and our workforce rules need to reflect this evolution. It is unacceptable for women to be forced to choose between their jobs and their families with the assumption that women can’t competently manage both. The assumption that women must be regulated by outside bodies (Pun intended!) is also unacceptable. Given that women are fast becoming the majority in the workforce, isn’t it time that the laws reflect this majority? Without re-evaluation and application of individual rights to women as well as re-evaluation of our workplace rules and standards, we stand to see many more cases like Burton v. Florida.
Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act: No Help for Mamas on Bedrest
August 11th, 2010On August 9, 2010, the Masschusetts Supreme Court ruled that the maximum amount of time a woman may be absent from her full time job for the purposes of delivering a child or adopting a child and still be guaranteed her position is 8 weeks. The ruling came as a result of a lawsuit involving a housekeeper who took 10 weeks of maternity leave and was subsequently fired from her job. She sued her employer and received more than $1million in settlement. What this ruling doesn’t do is make any provisions for women experiencing high risk pregnancies, mamas on bedrest.
The ruling is seen as a victory for businesses who have long contended that the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the governing body for the law, often rules too harshly against businesses while giving broad leeway to employees.
In a 4-to-3 ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court said the 1972 law guarantees full-time employees eight weeks off to give birth or to adopt a child, after which they are entitled to return to the same job or a comparable one. Beyond that, however, the law does not protect them.
“Once a female employee is absent from employment for more than eight weeks, she is no longer within the purview of the [Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act] and, consequently, is not afforded the protections conferred by the statute,’’ Justice Francis X. Spina wrote for the majority.
Upon first hearing of the ruling, I was outraged. 8 weeks leave is nothing, especially if a woman is high risk. She can easily blow through 8 weeks of leave on bed rest! However, The Massachusetts Maternity Leave Act is very specific. The 8 weeks is for delivery of the baby only. If a woman has complications prior to her delivery, then she is entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave (provided she is a full time employee, the company has more than 50 employees and she has fulfilled any probationary time or preliminary benefit requirements) as mandated in the federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The two laws can overlap and a woman can actually take 12 weeks of unpaid leave under FML, and, if she delivers within that time at say 11 weeks, then be entitled to 8 more weeks of unpaid leave for the delivery of her child. Additionally, if a woman has saved paid time off, she can also use that time to extend her leave.
So while I am feeling a tad better about MMLA, there is still the underlying issue that is nagging in the back of my mind-women are still being forced to choose between their own health and the health of their unborn babies and the needs of their families. Even in the best of circumstances, many women are not physically ready to return to work in 8 weeks. Many newborn infants have not yet established solid breastfeeding habits and most infants are awake most of the night. So we have a new mother whose body is recovering from the rigors of pregnancy, labor and delivery, who may be trying to breastfeed, who is up at all hours with her newborn, who may be suffering from the baby blues or frank post partum depression and is stressed because if she doesn’t pull it together and get back to work, she will lose even more income and quite possibly her job. And this is in a “good” scenario, one in which the woman had an uncomplicated pregnancy and a normal, uneventful vaginal labor and delivery. We haven’t even begun to discuss women who may have had pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, cesarean sections, who may have hemorrhaged after delivery or who develope infections post partum. We haven’t included women who go into preterm labor and who delivered premature infants who stay in the NICU for months, have medical problems and a long and complicated road ahead of then. As anyone who has been in any one or a combination of the aforementioned scenarios, It can be weeks to months for mama to fully recover from her pregnancy, all the while she may not have any income, her family may be facing financial ruin and she is completely at odds about what to do; care for her own health and the health of her newborn or risk the security of the entire family if she cannot return to work. Most women will return to work and attempt to deal with any physical, medical or emotional fall out later.
I wonder if employers ever stopped to consider the fact that they could dramatically increase productivity and employee retention of they would give more support to mamas. Currently the United states is one of few if not the only developed nation that offers no paid maternity leave. We are one of the only nations that doesn’t routinely provide childcare assistance to families in the form of onsite childcare centers and school allowances. We boldly proclaim, “No Child Left Behind!” Yet fail to realize that failure to support new and expectant mothers by default leaves their children behind-especially when mama delivers an infant with medical and/or developmental problems.
The United States can do better. Paid leave is not an impossibility nor is it “too expensive” a benefit. Consider this, if the same woman, months after delivering her child were to need a knee replacement, she would be allowed the time off and most likely would have some sort of financial compensation-even if it is a percentage of her income. If we can pay to fix her knee, shouldn’t it be that we pay for her to give birth?
But in the end, we women, especially we mamas on bed rest, are going to have to make our voices heard. I highly doubt that our predominently male leadership has ever considered the physical, emotional and financial toll having a baby places on a woman and her family. So it is up to us to bring this matter to their attention and to press them to make beneficial decisions on our behalf. Like all other social issues in our history (Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights and Title 9) change will only come if we demand it and it’s high time that we make the needs of mamas on bed rest known and demand that those needs be met.
How did your fund your maternity leave? What were the challenges you faced? Share your story in our comments section below.
Please pass this post onto other mamas. We all need to be aware of what our lawmakers and those supposed to be advocating on our behalf are doing. We have to be the change that we seek.
Angela Davids: Helping Mamas on Bedrest KeepEmCookin’!
August 9th, 2010
This month I am happy to feature someone who I now consider a good friend, Angela Davids. I actually met and got to know Angela on Twitter (@KeepEmCookin) as we are both passionate about supporting high risk pregnant women on bedrest. I knew from her website (www.keepemcookin.com) that Angela spent time on bed rest with both of her pregnancies, but when she told me what she went through with her second pregnancy, I knew that it was a story that needed to be shared. Angela developed severe pre-eclampsia following the birth of her son. What followed was nearly a fatal catastrophe. But I’m going to let Angela speak for herself. Here is Angela’s story.
Late in 2007, Just 5 weeks into my pregnancy, I discovered through ultrasound that I was pregnant with twins. My husband and I were shocked-yet we couldn’t have been happier. I had miscarried with our first pregnancy, so in a way it felt like we were making up for the baby we had lost.
At 17 weeks into the pregnancy, I begin having contractions.
At 19 weeks into the pregnancy, we had the regularly scheduled ultrasound where most people usually find out if they are having a girl or boy. Would we have one of each? Two boys? Two girls? February 28, 2008 was going to be one of the most exciting days of our lives!
At the ultrasound, we first found out we were having a boy. Bliss! And then the sonographer told us that the other baby had died in utero. I had just heard both heartbeats two weeks before and we had an ultrasound before that, where we saw their fingers and toes and adorable faces. Worry set in. Would the loss of one baby cause me to miscarry and lose both babies? My doctor said we would just need to wait to see if we would make it to 24 weeks, which is the earliest point of viability.
At 24 weeks and 1 day, I went into preterm labor and was placed on prescribed bed rest.
We were able to halt labor, and after nearly four months of bed rest and A LOT of medication, our Little Guy arrived safely at 39 weeks and 3 days on July 20, 2008. He was perfect, But I was in the worse shape of my life!
Immediately after delivery I was in agonizing pain, could barely think and couldn’t put my thoughts together enough to speak. Over the next couple of days I grew worse. I couldn’t walk and I could only hold my son if someone handed him to me because I was so weak. I couldn’t empty my bladder, so a catheter was placed. I cried and said I wasn’t ready to go home, but still, the doctors sent me home.
I called the hospital every day to describe my worsening symptoms; headaches, sudden swelling in my legs, extreme weakness, dangerously high blood pressure. Each time I spoke to a different doctor. Perhaps because I was so weak and my thoughts and speech were so confused, they couldn’t understand what I was saying. But on the fifth day home, I suddenly had chest pain and a nose bleed and my husband put me in the car and immediately drove me back to Labor and Delivery.
The doctors suspected preeclampsia, a condition characterized by often dangerously high blood pressure, extremity swelling and protein in the urine. It is treated with magnesium sulfate given intravenously to prevent seizure and stroke from the high blood pressure. It’s a horrible drug, with unbearable side effects for some, but it works. A few hours later when they tested my blood, they realized that the magnesium sulfate wasn’t leaving my body through my urine because I wasn’t urinating. It was trapped in my body because I was in acute kidney failure.
The pain was unreal and the thought of it still frightens me. Every moment was a struggle. The monitors sounded an alarm every time I shut my eyes because if I didn’t force myself to breathe, I stopped breathing. My sister was amazing, telling me, “Stay awake, Ang. You can get through this.” While doing her best to encourage and support me, she was running to the bathroom to throw up because she was so sick with worry. Meanwhile, my husband and my mom were at home with my newborn son and our two and a half year old, trying to maintain some kind of normalcy there.
After a week in the hospital, a blood transfusion and various IV fluids I was able to return home to my son. I was still very weak, but at least I was home.
When I thought of how lonely and frightened I was during my long months of bed rest, then to miss the first two weeks of my son’s life after all those hours waiting for him was almost unbearable. Part of me wanted to leave my experiences with bed rest and preeclampsia behind, to just move on. But I knew I was lucky to be alive. I had learned so much through my experience I decided to create a way for women on bed rest to reach out to one another online, to describe what they are experiencing and to help one another. That’s where the idea for KeepEmCookin.com came from.
Ladies, We can learn from one another and teach one another about high-risk pregnancy; what symptoms to look out for, how to care for ourselves and how to advocate for ourselves. We can share with one another the right questions to ask our doctors and how to make ourselves heard. Most importantly, We can do our part to guarantee that we have the healthiest pregnancies possible and keep our babies safely cookin’.
