Pregnant workers already face discrimination on the job, Before the pandemic struck, the United States was the only advanced nation without a national paid maternity or parental leave policy. Now, pregnant workers have to navigate workplaces that pose real infection risks — often without recourse. Delivering a child in the pandemic has become fraught and isolating. And for many new moms whose low-wage jobs are considered "essential," the emergency paid leave law Congress passed doesn’t even apply. So what can we learn from the pandemic about how to better protect pregnant workers? How can we ensure healthy outcomes for new mothers and children, and, in particular, for new African American mothers and children, whose rates of infant and maternal mortality are alarmingly high?

Host: Brigid Schulte, Director, Better Life Lab at New America

Guests:

Gabrielle Caverl-McNeal, Director of Workforce Development at New Moms

Dina Bakst, Co-founder and co-president of A Better Balance

Khushbu Shah, Interim Editor in Chief, Fuller Project

Rebecca Pontikes, Principal of Pontikes Law LLC

Dr. Ashley Deutsch, Director of Quality and Patient Safety for the Department of Emergency Medicine at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA