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New York Times spreads fear and misinformation on pregnancy discrimination protections
In an article published just before Election Day, The New York Times appeared to attempt a hit piece, making it appear that the Trump administration has a plan to scale back pregnancy-related protections under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
However, though not yet announced, the focus of the rollback appears to be on removing accommodations for non-pregnancy-related concerns and ensuring abortion is not included, in compliance with a judge's previous order.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was created to ensure “reasonable accommodation” for a qualified employee’s known limitations related to, affected by, or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.
The Final Rule of the PWFA included accommodations for abortion; however, a judge struck these down in 2025.
Andrea Lucas, chair of the EEOC, is seeking to roll back some of the PWFA requirements that are not directly related to pregnancy.
Though those changes have not yet been announced, they are rumored to include accommodations for menstruation, menopause, infertility, and contraception.
Despite its eye-catching and misleading headline — Trump Administration Said to Plan Rolling Back Pregnancy-Related Job Protections — the planned rollback has nothing to do with pregnancy. It's the opposite. And the NYT knows this. It noted, "The Biden era law was meant to help women stay in the workplace, but some conservatives say rules to enact it went too far with coverage for abortion and fertility treatment" (emphasis added).
And that's the part that the Trump administration is allegedly focused on restructuring. Currently, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) includes accommodations for not just pregnancy, but for everything from menstruation to menopause.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is seeking to roll back the requirements to exclude these non-pregnancy conditions.
The PWFA requires employers to provide a “reasonable accommodation” to a qualified employee’s known limitations related to, affected by, or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless the accommodation will cause the employer an “undue hardship.” The PWFA:
became law in June 2023.
stipulated that employers must provide workplace accommodations for pregnant women, including assistance with time off for prenatal or postnatal appointments and recovery from childbirth.
also required accommodations related to seating, food and water breaks, restroom breaks, breastfeeding, and miscarriage.
Then, in 2024, the EEOC released its Final Rule clarification to the PWFA, which mandated that employers must make accommodations for women who undergo abortions and took a broad look at what could be included in "related medical conditions" to include menstruation, menopause, and fertility treatments
There is a difference between accommodating pregnancy needs and accommodating the killing of preborn children.
In the last few years, employers have actually bent over backwards to accommodate abortion travel and even pay for it while simultaneously cutting back on maternity care coverage. This implies that mothers are less valuable to employers and less likely to be promoted or even keep their jobs than women who have abortions.
Andrea Lucas, chair of the EEOC, has vocally supported the PWFA, but said she does not agree with the EEOC's interpretation in the Final Rule of the phrase "pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions." She intends to reconsider portions of the Final Rule that she considers to be unsupported by the PFWA, such as fertility treatments, menstruation, endometriosis, contraception, and menopause.
The EEOC is expected to publish the specific proposed changes as early as this month, said the NYT, and is not expected to remove any of the requirements that protect pregnant women.
Lucas stated in 2024:
“I support elements of the final rule. However, I am unable to approve it because it purports to broaden the scope of the statute in ways that, in my view, cannot reasonably be reconciled with the text. At a high level, the rule fundamentally errs in conflating pregnancy and childbirth accommodation with accommodation of the female sex, that is, female biology and reproduction.
The Commission extends the new accommodation requirements to reach virtually every condition, circumstance, or procedure that relates to any aspect of the female reproductive system. And the results are paradoxical.
Worse, the Commission chose not to structure the final rule in a manner that realistically allows for severability of its objectionable provisions from its reasonable and rational components.”
She added:
"... menstruation, infertility, menopause, and the like are not caused or exacerbated by a particular pregnancy or childbirth – but rather the functioning, or ill-functioning, of the female worker's underlying reproductive system."
As for abortion, the requirement that employers accommodate employees' abortions is no longer in effect.
In May 2025, Judge David C. Joseph ruled that the EEOC exceeded its rulemaking authority in relation to its “abortion accommodation mandate." As reported by JDSUPRA, Joseph "said it violated the major questions doctrine, which requires clear congressional authorization for agency actions of significant economic and political importance."
Joseph explained: “[A]ny analysis of the Final Rule must begin with the presumption that Congress’s decision not to include any reference to abortion in the PWFA was intentional.”
His decision meant portions of the final rule that required employers to provide employees with accommodations for elective abortions were blocked.
He told the EEOC to revise the rule, but accommodations for non-pregnancy-related conditions are still a part of the rule, and Lucas disagrees with this.
By accommodating for non-pregnancy-related concerns under an act that has "pregnant worker fairness" in its title, the PWFA essentially implies that even the ability to become pregnant is a problem for women when it comes to their employment.
Jocelyn Samuels, former vice chair of the EEOC, helped write the rule and said that it was created to ensure that pregnancy and related conditions "are not obstacles to a woman's ability to remain employed and progress in the workplace."
Women have been in the workforce for a century, with millions seeking work outside the home during World War II. Of course, women should not be fired or overlooked for a promotion because of pregnancy or the ability to become pregnant, or anything related to their reproductive system.
But Lucas believes that forcing employers to accommodate everything from menstruation to menopause has nothing to do with the pregnancy discrimination that the PWFA exists to prevent.
Despite the accommodations for abortion rule being struck down, the NYT focused heavily on abortion as if it were necessary in order for women to achieve career success. Judge Joseph said the PWFA could not include what he called “purely elective abortions.”
Abortionist Dr. Allison A. Cowett, director of Family Planning Associates of Chicago, told the NYT that the term "elective abortions" is not used by medical professionals — only by pro-life advocates.
Not only is this not true — medical journals use the term elective abortion — but even abortions carried out late in pregnancy for what would be considered 'medical' reasons are elective, because there is no reason to intentionally and directly kill a preborn baby.
Most abortions would be considered elective because they happen for reasons that are not considered 'medical,' such as the mother's educational or financial status.
Aborting a baby because of that baby's diagnosis is elective. Intentionally and directly ending a child's life because of a mother's diagnosis is also elective. If and when a pregnancy must end due to a medical emergency (ectopic pregnancy, preeclampsia, preterm premature rupture of membranes, etc.), this can happen with the child being intentionally and directly killed. If a child is delivered prematurely and is too young to survive, this is not an abortion.
Intent matters.
The reason Cowett and other abortion supporters want to erase the term elective is that they want abortion to be seen as necessary health care (it isn't) rather than a "choice," as it was marketed as for decades. Insurance companies try to avoid paying for anything that is not medically necessary — but abortionists want to get paid.
Case in point: the NYT wrote that Cowett fears if employers are not forced to provide abortion accommodations, it would "hurt the roughly 5,000 women who travel from as far away as Texas and Florida to have abortions at her clinic each year."
But there are some problems with this claim:
Most women who couldn't get abortions were ultimately happy they had their children.
Even if those 5,000 women couldn't travel to Cowett, they could still get their abortions via online abortion pill availability, thanks to the Biden administration's changes in recent years.
So, would it really hurt the women if employers don't provide accommodations to kill their preborn children?
Cowett is the one who would miss out on all that money.
According to AbortionFinder.org, Cowett's facility charges $560 for the abortion pill, and the lowest cost for surgical abortion there (through 11 weeks, six days) is $640. The cost rises with gestational age up to $3,460 for babies 22 weeks to 23 weeks and three days old. (Babies born as early as 21 weeks have survived.)
Even if every single abortion committed at Cowett's facility cost the minimum of $560, the deaths of those 5,000 babies are worth $2.8 million to Cowett's business.
It turns out the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade caused a boon for Cowett's facility. The NYT reported that the number of out-of-state patients visiting Cowett has more than tripled since Roe fell. She gives those women doctors' notes to give to their employers so they can receive accommodations and possibly reimbursement.
But if the PWFA doesn't force employers to make these accommodations, that's fewer women and babies to profit from.
It's likely that scaling back the PWFA won't result in fewer accommodations for pregnant women. Lucas is likely seeking to remove accommodations for non-pregnant women under the PWFA since it exists specifically to combat pregnancy discrimination.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
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·New York Times spreads fear and misinformation on pregnancy discrimination protections
In an article published just before Election Day, The New York Times appeared to attempt a hit piece, making it appear that the Trump administration has a plan to scale back pregnancy-related protections under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
However, though not yet announced, the focus of the rollback appears to be on removing accommodations for non-pregnancy-related concerns and ensuring abortion is not included, in compliance with a judge's previous order.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was created to ensure “reasonable accommodation” for a qualified employee’s known limitations related to, affected by, or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.
The Final Rule of the PWFA included accommodations for abortion; however, a judge struck these down in 2025.
Andrea Lucas, chair of the EEOC, is seeking to roll back some of the PWFA requirements that are not directly related to pregnancy.
Though those changes have not yet been announced, they are rumored to include accommodations for menstruation, menopause, infertility, and contraception.
Despite its eye-catching and misleading headline — Trump Administration Said to Plan Rolling Back Pregnancy-Related Job Protections — the planned rollback has nothing to do with pregnancy. It's the opposite. And the NYT knows this. It noted, "The Biden era law was meant to help women stay in the workplace, but some conservatives say rules to enact it went too far with coverage for abortion and fertility treatment" (emphasis added).
And that's the part that the Trump administration is allegedly focused on restructuring. Currently, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) includes accommodations for not just pregnancy, but for everything from menstruation to menopause.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is seeking to roll back the requirements to exclude these non-pregnancy conditions.
The PWFA requires employers to provide a “reasonable accommodation” to a qualified employee’s known limitations related to, affected by, or arising out of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless the accommodation will cause the employer an “undue hardship.” The PWFA:
became law in June 2023.
stipulated that employers must provide workplace accommodations for pregnant women, including assistance with time off for prenatal or postnatal appointments and recovery from childbirth.
also required accommodations related to seating, food and water breaks, restroom breaks, breastfeeding, and miscarriage.
Then, in 2024, the EEOC released its Final Rule clarification to the PWFA, which mandated that employers must make accommodations for women who undergo abortions and took a broad look at what could be included in "related medical conditions" to include menstruation, menopause, and fertility treatments
There is a difference between accommodating pregnancy needs and accommodating the killing of preborn children.
In the last few years, employers have actually bent over backwards to accommodate abortion travel and even pay for it while simultaneously cutting back on maternity care coverage. This implies that mothers are less valuable to employers and less likely to be promoted or even keep their jobs than women who have abortions.
Andrea Lucas, chair of the EEOC, has vocally supported the PWFA, but said she does not agree with the EEOC's interpretation in the Final Rule of the phrase "pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions." She intends to reconsider portions of the Final Rule that she considers to be unsupported by the PFWA, such as fertility treatments, menstruation, endometriosis, contraception, and menopause.
The EEOC is expected to publish the specific proposed changes as early as this month, said the NYT, and is not expected to remove any of the requirements that protect pregnant women.
Lucas stated in 2024:
“I support elements of the final rule. However, I am unable to approve it because it purports to broaden the scope of the statute in ways that, in my view, cannot reasonably be reconciled with the text. At a high level, the rule fundamentally errs in conflating pregnancy and childbirth accommodation with accommodation of the female sex, that is, female biology and reproduction.
The Commission extends the new accommodation requirements to reach virtually every condition, circumstance, or procedure that relates to any aspect of the female reproductive system. And the results are paradoxical.
Worse, the Commission chose not to structure the final rule in a manner that realistically allows for severability of its objectionable provisions from its reasonable and rational components.”
She added:
"... menstruation, infertility, menopause, and the like are not caused or exacerbated by a particular pregnancy or childbirth – but rather the functioning, or ill-functioning, of the female worker's underlying reproductive system."
As for abortion, the requirement that employers accommodate employees' abortions is no longer in effect.
In May 2025, Judge David C. Joseph ruled that the EEOC exceeded its rulemaking authority in relation to its “abortion accommodation mandate." As reported by JDSUPRA, Joseph "said it violated the major questions doctrine, which requires clear congressional authorization for agency actions of significant economic and political importance."
Joseph explained: “[A]ny analysis of the Final Rule must begin with the presumption that Congress’s decision not to include any reference to abortion in the PWFA was intentional.”
His decision meant portions of the final rule that required employers to provide employees with accommodations for elective abortions were blocked.
He told the EEOC to revise the rule, but accommodations for non-pregnancy-related conditions are still a part of the rule, and Lucas disagrees with this.
By accommodating for non-pregnancy-related concerns under an act that has "pregnant worker fairness" in its title, the PWFA essentially implies that even the ability to become pregnant is a problem for women when it comes to their employment.
Jocelyn Samuels, former vice chair of the EEOC, helped write the rule and said that it was created to ensure that pregnancy and related conditions "are not obstacles to a woman's ability to remain employed and progress in the workplace."
Women have been in the workforce for a century, with millions seeking work outside the home during World War II. Of course, women should not be fired or overlooked for a promotion because of pregnancy or the ability to become pregnant, or anything related to their reproductive system.
But Lucas believes that forcing employers to accommodate everything from menstruation to menopause has nothing to do with the pregnancy discrimination that the PWFA exists to prevent.
Despite the accommodations for abortion rule being struck down, the NYT focused heavily on abortion as if it were necessary in order for women to achieve career success. Judge Joseph said the PWFA could not include what he called “purely elective abortions.”
Abortionist Dr. Allison A. Cowett, director of Family Planning Associates of Chicago, told the NYT that the term "elective abortions" is not used by medical professionals — only by pro-life advocates.
Not only is this not true — medical journals use the term elective abortion — but even abortions carried out late in pregnancy for what would be considered 'medical' reasons are elective, because there is no reason to intentionally and directly kill a preborn baby.
Most abortions would be considered elective because they happen for reasons that are not considered 'medical,' such as the mother's educational or financial status.
Aborting a baby because of that baby's diagnosis is elective. Intentionally and directly ending a child's life because of a mother's diagnosis is also elective. If and when a pregnancy must end due to a medical emergency (ectopic pregnancy, preeclampsia, preterm premature rupture of membranes, etc.), this can happen with the child being intentionally and directly killed. If a child is delivered prematurely and is too young to survive, this is not an abortion.
Intent matters.
The reason Cowett and other abortion supporters want to erase the term elective is that they want abortion to be seen as necessary health care (it isn't) rather than a "choice," as it was marketed as for decades. Insurance companies try to avoid paying for anything that is not medically necessary — but abortionists want to get paid.
Case in point: the NYT wrote that Cowett fears if employers are not forced to provide abortion accommodations, it would "hurt the roughly 5,000 women who travel from as far away as Texas and Florida to have abortions at her clinic each year."
But there are some problems with this claim:
Most women who couldn't get abortions were ultimately happy they had their children.
Even if those 5,000 women couldn't travel to Cowett, they could still get their abortions via online abortion pill availability, thanks to the Biden administration's changes in recent years.
So, would it really hurt the women if employers don't provide accommodations to kill their preborn children?
Cowett is the one who would miss out on all that money.
According to AbortionFinder.org, Cowett's facility charges $560 for the abortion pill, and the lowest cost for surgical abortion there (through 11 weeks, six days) is $640. The cost rises with gestational age up to $3,460 for babies 22 weeks to 23 weeks and three days old. (Babies born as early as 21 weeks have survived.)
Even if every single abortion committed at Cowett's facility cost the minimum of $560, the deaths of those 5,000 babies are worth $2.8 million to Cowett's business.
It turns out the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade caused a boon for Cowett's facility. The NYT reported that the number of out-of-state patients visiting Cowett has more than tripled since Roe fell. She gives those women doctors' notes to give to their employers so they can receive accommodations and possibly reimbursement.
But if the PWFA doesn't force employers to make these accommodations, that's fewer women and babies to profit from.
It's likely that scaling back the PWFA won't result in fewer accommodations for pregnant women. Lucas is likely seeking to remove accommodations for non-pregnant women under the PWFA since it exists specifically to combat pregnancy discrimination.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Cassy Cooke
·Politics
Cassy Cooke
·Politics
Mark Wiltz
·Politics
Nancy Flanders
·Guest Column
Mary Strow
·Politics
Cassy Cooke
·Politics
Nancy Flanders
·Investigative
Nancy Flanders
·Analysis
Nancy Flanders
·Pop Culture
Nancy Flanders
·Politics
Nancy Flanders
·