WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — New regulations from the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) would require religious employers to allow employees to have abortions and take contraception.
The proposed regulations, which are open for comment this Friday, come after President Joe Biden signed the legislation in December 2022. At the time, some pro-life groups warned that the law could violate the religious freedom of employers. Despite these objections, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) supported the legislation. The USCCB’s support was specifically cited in the introduction to the proposed regulations.
The regulations would require employers to protect an employee’s “use of birth control” and “having or choosing not to have an abortion.” This means, for example, that a Catholic high school could be sued if it fired a teacher who shared that she had recently aborted her baby. It does not require an employer to pay for someone’s abortion.
The USCCB “applaud[ed] these efforts which demonstrate a respect for life, family, and the dignity of workers.” It backed the law along with abortion giant Planned Parenthood.
The bishops’ conference subsequently released an analysis in July 2023 that stated the regulations should not be interpreted to include abortion. “Some advocacy groups are now making the strained claim that PWFA requires accommodations for abortion,” the USCCB wrote.
“During Congress’s deliberations over PWFA, some pro-life advocates, in an abundance of caution, had expressed concern that the EEOC might construe it that way. But PWFA does not have the goal of expanding access to abortion, and the EEOC should not reinterpret it as if it did.”
The optimism that the federal government would not broadly interpret the law to support abortion came despite Biden’s consistent record of using federal law to promote abortion, even when statutory language does not support it, such as rewriting regulations to allow abortion drugs to be shipped through the mail and creating a new policy that allows for the Pentagon to fund servicemembers abortions.
A Tuesday statement from Arlington, Virginia Bishop Michael Burbidge, the chair of pro-life activities, called the new regulations a “distortion.”
“We are hopeful that the EEOC will be forced to abandon its untenable position when public comments submitted on this regulation demonstrate that its interpretation would be struck down in court,” Burbidge stated.
However, beyond the statement, it’s not clear what specific actions the USCCB plans to undertake to push back against the new regulations.
LifeSiteNews emailed the USCCB on Tuesday morning and asked if the advocacy organization planned to encourage Catholics to voice their opposition and use its lobbying resources to seek changes. The USCCB media relations office did not issue a response or return a Tuesday morning voicemail that asked the same questions.
Other bishops made separate statements in support of the law.
Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann, in 2021, signed a statement in support of the bill. At the time he chaired the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities. His media team declined to comment, citing his current travel schedule with World Youth Day.
“Thanks for your query, but Archbishop Naumann is still traveling with our WYD pilgrims and will be until the end of the week,” Anita McSorley wrote on Tuesday. LifeSiteNews asked if he planned to encourage any action against the regulations.
A leading pro-life legal group criticized the new regulations.
“Congress sought to help pregnant workers, not force employers to facilitate abortions,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Julie Blake stated. “The Biden administration is hijacking a bipartisan law that doesn’t even mention abortion to forcibly require every employer in America to provide ‘reasonable accommodations’ for their workers’ elective abortions.”
“The administration’s unlawful proposal violates state laws protecting the unborn and employers’ pro-life and religious beliefs,” Blake stated. “The administration doesn’t have the legal authority to smuggle an abortion mandate into a transformational pro-life, pro-woman law. Alliance Defending Freedom stands ready to continue defending unborn lives and to oppose this egregious federal overreach.”
Other pro-life groups had sounded the alarm prior to the law’s passage.
“Under the bill… pro-life groups can be sued if they don’t provide their employees special leave to get abortions,” Tom McClusky with Catholic Vote predicted in 2022, prior to the passage of the bill.
Catholic Vote’s Erika Ahern also noted at the time that the definition of discrimination will be deferred to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which currently takes a pro-abortion stance on pregnancy issues.
“The EEOC does not typically act in a way that aligns with pro-life or Catholic views. In general, the EEOC has interpreted ‘pregnancy-related’ discrimination issues to include protecting workers’ ‘right’ to abortion,” Ahern wrote, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews.
LifeSiteNews will provide further details on how to voice opposition to the regulations when they come out on Friday. The comment period will open on Friday and individuals can share their opposition at regulations.gov.