Denizer Carter penned this piece in 2022, a month before the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act’s passage, sharing her story of being forced off her job at a grocery store because she needed an accommodation while pregnant, and urging the Senate to prioritize the PWFA. The voices of women like her were instrumental in the law ultimately being passed in December 2022.
“In 2019, I was working as a cashier for a large grocery store chain in Louisiana when I became pregnant with my second child. When the store’s management found out about my restrictions, they pushed me out of my job.”
(This essay is a part of Ms. and A Better Balance’s Women & Democracy installment, all about the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act—a groundbreaking civil rights law ensuring pregnant and postpartum workers have the right to reasonable workplace accommodations. Bipartisan, pro-family and boldly feminist, the PWFA is both a lesson in democracy and a battleground for its defense against antidemocratic attacks.)