18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies · Notable · Needs Congress
Pass a law requiring equal or greater benefits for pregnancy and childbirth
Printed page 585 18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies
“Pass a law requiring equal (or greater) benefits for pro-life support for mothers and clarifying abortion exclusions. Congress should pass a law requiring that to the extent an employer provides employee benefits for abortion, it must provide equal or greater benefits for pregnancy, childbirth, maternity, and adoption. That law should also clarify that no employer is required to provide any accommodations or benefits for abortion.”
What has happened
- Not started
No bill of the 119th Congress requires an employer that funds abortion benefits to provide equal or greater benefits for pregnancy, childbirth, maternity and adoption, or clarifies that no employer must accommodate abortion. Fifty-one abortion bills and thirty pregnancy bills were introduced; none reaches employer benefit design.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Negative search recorded in the chapter log under Cluster negative search — abortion, pregnancy and ERISA benefit asks (#1604, #1605).
- The nearest instrument in the window runs the other way from the Quote’s second limb: the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulation’s abortion-accommodation provision was vacated by the Eighth Circuit in 2025 on Administrative Procedure Act grounds, which removes the federal accommodation requirement the Quote objects to without any of the affirmative pregnancy-benefit parity the Quote asks Congress to create. That is a different object and carries no Status event here.
- Action
- create
- Object
- Law on employer abortion and pregnancy benefits
- ID
- 1604