Does Missouri Bill Let Employers Fire People Who Use Birth Control?
This was reported a week ago, and may not be news to some of you. There seems to be a lot of this sort of governance and bill-passing going on at the moment.
As Feministing reported last week:
Yesterday, the Missouri House voted to pass SB 5, a bill imposing several highly burdensome and even more unnecessary restrictions on abortion providers; for example, the bill would require abortion providers to send fetal tissue samples to a pathologist within five days. While supporters of targeted restrictions of abortion providers (aka TRAP laws) claim they’re supporting women’s health, regulations like these often serve no medical purpose whatsoever. In reality, anti-choice legislators use them as a pretext to impose costs and red tape on abortion clinics, forcing them to close.
But SB 5 has another insidious purpose: to overturn a St. Louis ordinance that bans employers and landlords from discriminating against people on the basis of their reproductive health decisions. In other words, if SB 5 is passed, you could be evicted in the state of Missouri for having an abortion, using birth control, or becoming pregnant while unmarried....
The result of that special session is SB 5, which the Missouri Senate passed last Wednesday after 10 hours of negotiations behind closed doors. The House passed an amended, even more anti-choice version late yesterday.
That’s right. Missouri lawmakers are going out of their way to say that if an employer has a problem with you taking the pill, he can fire you – and he’ll have a seal of approval from the state of Missouri....
As if all of this wasn’t enough, SB 5 also limits regulation of so-called “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” (anti-choice “clinics” that feed pregnant people misinformation to trick them out of having abortions), gives Missouri’s virulently anti-choice Attorney General Josh Hawley power to prosecute potential violations of Missouri’s TRAP laws, and allow the state to harass abortion clinics with unannounced inspections. The House’s version of the bill is headed back to the Senate, with amendments making it even harsher – and if it passes there it’ll head straight to Governor Greitens’ desk.
Missouri Governor Eric Greitens seems to have twisted opinion of what has been happening in his state:
“Unfortunately, we had some radical politicians in St. Louis, Missouri, that wanted to create an abortion sanctuary city that would have made it illegal for pregnancy care centers and other pro-life organizations just to hire pro-life workers."
This was in reference to the above-mentioned ordinance in St. Louis, banning discrimination in housing and employment if a woman has obtained an abortion or used contraception.
However, Newsweek has more recently reported this:
Contrary to news reports, a controversial new bill in Missouri does not attempt to allow employers to discriminate against women who used birth control, the governor's spokesman told Newsweek Thursday.
The bill, SB 5, would, among other things, impose tighter restrictions on abortion providers and allow real estate agents to refuse to sell or rent them land. The bill would also allow “alternatives to abortion agencies”—a term that includes places that encourage women to carry their babies to term—to function without the risk of political restriction.
What it would not do is bar women on birth control from working....
The confusion began after Missouri’s governor, Eric Greitens, recalled the state legislature for a special session “to protect the lives of the innocent unborn and protect women's health.” In a Facebook Live video explaining his decision, Greitens referred to “a new city law making St. Louis an abortion sanctuary city,” one in which, he said, pro-abortion pregnancy care centers were under attack....
“We’ve been really clear here from the beginning that our aim is to protect pregnancy care centers and to put in place some common sense health and safety standards,” Parker Briden, Greitens's press secretary, told Newsweek, adding that Greitens’s comments about the St. Louis ordinance were focused on regulating the provision of abortion, and not on other forms of reproductive health care.
Despite the confusion, and change of reporting from some outlets (Newsweek themselves retracted a story that was originally based on the above Feministing article), there is enough here to be worried about. It seems that Republican lawmakers are energised by the present political scenario in the US. Be warned!