New Bill in Congress
November 12th, 2005 at 12:53 am (News)
A new bill is being presented in Congress that would call for support services for pregant and parenting students at colleges and universities. It is S.1966 in the Senate and H.R.4265 in the House. The bill would provide grants to encourage colleges and universities to provide councelling, medical care for children and pregant women, access to day care and other care services, access to needed supplies (baby food, clothes, furnature, etc.) and general support for families, pregant women and their husbands/whatever, and students considering adoption.
This bill is a big deal because as it is, it is nearly impossible for many women to be mothers and students at the same time. Many student health care providers will pay for an abortion but not for a pregnancy or infant care. Many student councelling services will discuss abortion, but not adoption. Women are discouraged from carrying pregancies to term because it is assumed that it will adversely affect their status as students and schools don’t want to deal with that. Women are passed over for grants, jobs and even class spots because of being pregant. Many women are pushed into “special education” programs due to pregancy (despite it being illegal) or hassled about absences, even when they provide doctors notes stating that they couldn’t attend because they were giving birth (this is illegal too). Many schools won’t allow parents to miss class due to a sick child, even if the parent never misses any other class session.
This bill would encourage schools to support these women, and the men and children in their lives, as they persue their degrees, but undergrad and graduate. This is a big deal and could be a wonderful thing if it passes. I’m going to keep an eye on this one and I hope that it passes easily. It is a bill that both parties should support and it should have lots of supporters from all sides of the abortion issue. It doesn’t deal with abortion, just families. No matter what your view on other issues, you should want to support families and a woman’s right to choose to have her baby even if she is a college student.
In the meantime, Girl-Mom has a good page about the rights of pregant women and mothers (and fathers too) in education as well as who to contact if you or someone you know is being descriminated against.
Alan De Smet said,
November 12, 2005 at 7:13 pm
Isn’t it reasonable to conclude that in the common case pregnancy will affect their status at students? Having children is a major impact on one’s life. To what extent is it fair for someone demand that their job or school to bend because of a choice they made? The situation is slightly different in school, but it bears many similarities to a job. Especially in professional fields, you hire someone because you need their knowledge and skills. Having them disappear for a three months can be a serious problem.
Mind you, I think as a society we should work to support pregnant women and families with children. It’s a benefit that draws employees. It means those families can more easily work instead of being a drain on society. But the employers (and in this case schools) also have needs. As a result, I need to specifically challenge your claim, “No matter what your view on other issues, you should want to support families and a woman’s right to choose to have her baby even if she is a college student.” Sure, a woman is free to chose to have a baby as a college student. But to expect that decision to have zero ramifications is not reasonable.
I suppose I’m a bit irritated at the common wisdom (not necessarily wisdom you, Katie, would agree with) that as a society we need to bend over to support a pregnant woman or someone raising a family. Some support is appropriate, but to an extent they need to take responsibility for their own lives. With a handful of rare exceptions, pregnancy is a choice. If pregnancy or raising children will significantly impact your schooling or your job, maybe you’re not ready to have children yet.
Blah.
Katie said,
November 13, 2005 at 2:51 pm
Most women don’t miss anywhere near three months during pregnancy. They sometimes should, for health reasons, but they usually don’t.
And school is not a job. First of all, you pay to be there. That really does make a difference. I don’t pay to go to school just to get forced into a “special education” track that I really don’t want to be in (they are required to be the same in quality, variety and standards as regular classes, but they often are not).
Another big point of the bill is health coverage. A great many student health care plans provide no coverage for pregnancy and infant care. The vast majority of employee health coverage does (largely because it is desireable to hire men with children, or who are planning to have children and because women will complain and not work for you if you don’t offer it). There is really no reason that student health care doesn’t cover it.
Every pregnant student is aware that pregnancy will affect her school work, that isn’t the point. Those women who really want the education will work twice as hard. Student moms are often some of the most dedicated and hard working students in college classes. And if we are going to give them a hard time about not having the education that would help them better support their families (student moms are largely single moms), we should better help them get it. Pregnancy will always affect your job or schooling. It’s not remotely fair to say that women shouldn’t have children if they want to keep their jobs or school standing. You’ll get a work force with an incredibly small population of women under 50. Or an extremely large population of parents in their 50s with young children (and unhappy mothers who had to give up careers). It’s not remotely fair to ask women to give up working when you don’t ask men to, even if the women may have to take some time off for creating life. Many men would take paternity leave if they could, but don’t really have the option. It should be an option. A man is also greatly affected in his job or schooling when his wife or girlfriend is pregnant. Somehow, that is more acceptable in universities at the moment. That isn’t fair.
The other point here is that pregnancy not always a choice. For many women, it’s that they choose not to terminate a pregnancy or don’t have the option to (given the current political climate that allows lots of laws governing the woman’s uterus). They should not be penalized for making a choice that they would be villianized for not making. And they should be allowed to choose to have a family. Women are generally penalized in our society for having a family and working or going to school at the same time. Employers generally don’t want to hire a woman who has kids or is likely to have them any time soon, but they more readily hire a man with children or a wife likely to have kids soon because they are more likely to look for stability and stay. It’s a real problem these days. And it shouldn’t be.
I think this is a great bill because it supports men and women who are not currently getting any support, should allow for more families to gain the tools they need to be better off (good for kids), and show that we value children and families (which is not always evident at the moment). And it would make the lives of a lot of people a little easier when it is really hard to get by. I really don’t see a downside here.
Alan De Smet said,
November 14, 2005 at 12:10 pm
You’re glossing over a key point with, “And they should be allowed to choose to have a family.” I believe you mean, “A woman should be allowed to choose to have a family _without it impacting her career_.” If not, my apologies, please clarify. Given that…
“A woman should be allowed to choose to have a family _without it impacting her career_.”
Why?
Employers don’t hire people because they’re nice people. They hire people because they have work that needs to be done. An employee who isn’t reliable is less valuable and their career will suffer. Why should it matter what the reason is? Perhaps they miss a morning because they need to take their kid to the doctor. Perhaps they miss a morning because the weather’s perfect for a little windsurfing (I work with strange people.).
_Having children is an choice_. (With a few exceptions that are so rare as to be irrelevant.) If my personal choices impact my job duties, I should expect it to impact my career. If my job means that children are not feasible, it’s unfortunate, but that’s life. Part of having a job is sacrificing choices for money.
As a society I believe we should provide some asssitance and slack for parents. If we don’t, it’s more likely that the parents will need to resort to public assistance and worse, that their kids will prove to be problematic. But it’s not a blank check. There will be an impact.
(And on a completely unrelated note, your comment text is awfully close to the color of your background. You’ve got a contrast of less than 45% of the possible range. That’s low contrast. I hardly have bad eyesight and I find it hard to read. Could you darken the comment text?)
Katie said,
November 16, 2005 at 4:04 am
Actually, I *didn’t* mean “without impacting her career”. I fully understand that children greatly impact a career (I just don’t think that one should be so fucking impossible if you have kids).
I did mean that I think a woman should be able to choose when to have children. I also don’t entirely agree that it is always a choice to get pregant (which seems to be what you are saying, so please correct me if I’m wrong). Regardless, if a woman gets pregant and doesn’t think she should have the baby at that time, she should have that choice. At the same time, if she gets pregant and does want to have the baby, she should have the choice to have it. As it is, many women get pregant and face either having an abortion or being basically left to their own devices in terms of medical care and support (even if you ignore the impacts the baby will have on her career or schooling).
Men really do have the choice to have as little or as much to do with the lives of their children as they want, especially if they aren’t married to the child’s mother. Women *never* have that choice. Even if you decide to give a baby up for adoption, you are still carrying it for nine of the most trying months of your life. And if you have it, you pretty much have to give up everything else unless you are pretty well off. That doesn’t mean you won’t have to work, most mothers do, it just means you probably have little say in what work you do or how many hours you work. That sucks.
A woman *should* have the choice to decide “I’m ready to be a parent now” or “I’m not ready yet”. The measure supported in this bill would give many women a little more support when they make the choice to have a baby. And yes, it is a choice for nearly all women whether you want to see it that way or not. Either you chose to get pregant or you don’t, in which case you choose what to do about the circumstance.
Just saying “you can’t expect kids to not influence your career” misses the point because it implies that you can choose not to have a career, which isn’t the case for most women. For many families, the money the mother brings in from her job, her career, is every bit as vital as the money the father brings in (assuming both parents are there, which they aren’t for a huge number of families). Saying any woman who can’t make that choice shouldn’t have kids means pretty much no woman who isn’t very well off can have kids at all. I’m not remotely ok with that. That’s pretty blatently class descrimination. Granted, there is some basis for it, but that doesn’t make it ok.