News Briefs: Midwifery Issues and Practice For Consumers, Attorneys, Physicians and More. . .
Issue Briefs/ May 12, 2025
Will Trump Usher in a New Wave of Pregnancy Discrimination?
The New Republic Reports: Underlying threats to health: We are facing a political climate that has the potential to leave you and your children at risk for health problems, with childhood vaccines under threat and federal funding for public health “slashed to the bone”. The same cuts to funding may also threaten your livelihood: Political leaders and government officials may make it harder for many pregnant and postpartum workers to keep their jobs, including holding employers accountable for pregnancy discrimination in the workplace.
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Advocates for labor and civil rights protections want pregnant people to know that in spite of the Trump administration’s attacks on forms of diversity in or outside the workplace, protections for pregnant and postpartum people at work still exist. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, PWFA – is a relatively new law that went into effect in 2023. The act ensures that pregnant and postpartum workers can receive workplace accommodations without being punished by their employers.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, PDA – prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, covering pregnant workers that the Pregnancy Disabilities Act and Americans with Disabilities Act may not always cover. Unfortunately, the administration’s attacks on civil rights issues adds a level of concern about whether workers will have a fair chance of being heard.
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Conservatives are pushing back on the rights of pregnant workers, initiating litigation which targets the PWFA, as they work to undermine reproductive health care more broadly. For instance, States with abortion bans have put pregnant people in the position of carrying nonviable pregnancies to term. Women with ectopic pregnancies have to experience their health deteriorating while they begged their doctors to provide emergency care. The 16 States with the most restrictive abortion laws as of December 2024 also had weak fair pay laws and no State paid family or medical leave laws.
Pregnant and postpartum workers have long experienced what is known as the “motherhood penalty” where their careers are often derailed by having children. A study in 2017 found that the earnings gap between a father and mother doubled between the two years before their child’s birth and the year after the birth. The financial challenges that many parents are already experiencing at this point in their family’s lives are further magnified by chaos caused by Trump’s sweeping tariffs and proposed changes to Medicaid.1
1. The New Republic. Written by Casey Quinlan. Mon, April 7, 2025.
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Trump Administration’s Executive Order Threatens a Historic Settlement That Could Improve Black Maternal Healthcare
President Trump’s executive order banning decades of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices is eroding the federal governments ability to hold hospital’s accountable for their treatment of Black birthing people and role in improving Black maternal health.
In 2016 a Black pregnant mother died after giving birth to her second child during a routine cesarean section at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Despite the concerns of her family regarding her condition following her C/S, Kira Johnson was allowed to bleed internally for more than 10 hours before her condition was addressed by medical staff.
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Kira was an accomplished individual and her two sons needed her. Yet her story is not unusual. Black women are 3.5 times more likely to die from pregnancy related complications than white women, regardless of education or income. Under a resolution agreement with health and human services on 1/16/25, the hospital was to take significant steps toward ensuring that all families receive respectful and high-quality maternity care.
Unfortunately, the settlement agreement promotes diversity and equity efforts and is grounded in principles of nondiscrimination protections, both of which are under threat by the Trump Administration.
Resources for more information on Kira Johnson’s case and Black Maternal Healthcare:
- 4 Kira 4 Moms
- The Momnibus: Kira Johnson Act
- Resolution Agreement Between the HHS OCR and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
- Section 1557 Final Rule: Non-Discrimination in Health Programs and Activities
- Irth App
Written by: Amani Nichols/Originally published in Ms. Magazine
President Trump: Stop Risking Pregnant Patients’ Lives ACT (Https://ACLU.ORG/ACTION)
President Trump’s Department of Justice has withdrawn from a DOJ case challenging Idaho’s ban on emergency abortion care – making clear that this administration will not fight to protect the health or lives of pregnant people.
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The Trump administration is actively endangering access to reproductive health care. The administration’s decision to drop the DOJ’s challenge sanctions which would allow Idaho to jail doctors for providing emergency abortion care, directly violating federal law and putting patients’ lives at risk. This attack on access to lifesaving abortion care proves that Trump has broken his campaign promise to not take federal actions restricting abortion access. It is clear that these assaults on our reproductive rights are only beginning.
Privacy statement (https://www.aclu.org/about/privacy/statement)
DONATE (HTTPS://WWW.ACLU.ORG/DONATE)
Black Maternal Mortality: ‘It is Racism, not Race’
Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs
On May 6, 2021, the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee held a hearing on racism in Black maternal health care. Among the witnesses were families of Black mothers who had died during childbirth. Congresswoman Cori Bush delivered a passionate speech recounting her own traumatic pregnancy experiences as a Black woman. “Every day, Black women are 4 times more likely to experience a pregnancy-related death than white women. This was four years ago and things have not really improved.
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The tragic story of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health alumnus, Shalon Irving underscores issues present, then, that are still present now. Shalon was an epidemiologist at the CDC ,whose personal research aimed to address health disparities, died three weeks after giving birth to her daughter in 2017. In the week leading to her death, she experienced symptoms such as blood pressure spikes, severe lower extremity swelling, headaches, and swelling at her C/S incision site. Shalon repeatedly sought medical care for these symptoms but her providers actually dismissed her complaints as normal. The nature of her symptoms were in no way normal. They were obvious red flags that any provider paying attention should have recognized. Ultimately, Shalon collapsed and died at her home.
These stories represent a crisis that is driven and sustained by “unconscious” bias in the medical system. In a 2016 survey of white medical students, at least half of them held false beliefs about biological differences in Black patients, including thicker skin and less sensitive nerve endings. Another 2020 study found that Black babies are more likely to live if they are cared for by a Black physician. As recent as 2021, the CDC declared racism as a public health threat. The maternal mortality crisis in the United States reveals the truth behind this declaration: It is racism, not race, that is killing America’s Black mothers and babies.
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Prior to the new administration, a bill titled Black Maternal Health Momnibus, created opportunities for developing data-driven, evidence based practices and programs that would value the lives, knowledge, and leadership of Black women. Its plan was to invest in the health of Black women. At the time, someone said, “We can not legislate for compassion”. And now the prospects for, not only addressing, but curing the problem is so much worse. The maternal mortality crisis will likely, not interest anyone in the current administration, especially for the special needs of Black women. It is unlikely that any further connection between racism and health will be investigated, due to lack of administrative interest and the diversion of money away from investigations or initiatives to mitigate the problem.
By Johns Hopkins CCP writer Tina Suliman
https://www.midwivesontrial.com