Fetal Protection and Workplace Discrimination Against Women

[Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

The Politics of Fetal/Maternal Conflict

by Rutb Hubbard *

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Fetal Protection and Workplace Discrimination Against Women

As we have seen, the ability to visualize a fetus and test for certain
aspects of its health status makes that fetus more real, more of a
person. And when that happens, the pregnant woman seems to become more
of a fetal container and less of a person.

Further detrimental effects of this skewed view of pregnancy are
illustrated by the so-called fetal protection policies by which women
of childbearing age, as a class, have been excluded from certain job
categories in which they run the risk of being exposed to radiation,
lead, or other toxic chemicals. These concerns are not raised because
the agents pose dangers to the workers - women and men - but because
of the dangers they pose to a "potential" fetus, in case the woman is
pregnant. In this construct, all women of childbearing age are deemed
potentially pregnant, hence excludable, unless they can show that they
have been sterilized. Their life-partner being sterile is not enough;
they must be unable to become pregnant.

Similar concerns are not raised to protect women who work at jobs that
are more traditional for women, as nurses, hospital or chemical
laboratory clean-up personnel, beauticians, pottery painters, or
indeed housewives. All such women routinely come in contact with toxic
chemicals, biologicals, or radiation that can endanger their fetus
when they are pregnant. But the concern is reserved for women employed
in jobs, traditionally occupied by men, that pay higher wages and
include better benefits than traditional women's jobs do. Attorney
Joan E. Bertin (1993) makes the telling point that a woman's
employment is often critical to a healthy pregnancy and only she, not
her employer, can judge what risks are worth taking to continue in a
particular job.

So-called fetal protection policies may have been discouraged by a
decision the U.S. Supreme Court rendered in 1991. The court held that
it was unlawful for Johnson Controls, Inc., a manufacturer of lead
batteries, with plants across the country from Vermont to California,
to exclude women from working in its lead battery department.
(International Union, UAW v. Johnson Controls, 1991). Johnson Controls
had enforced this policy irrespective of the women's marital status or
their intentions not to have (more) children, so limiting women's
access to more than 20 million jobs (Bertin 1993).

Meanwhile, scientific and news articles have reported research showing
that men's exposure to pesticides, radiation, and toxic work-place
chemicals, as well as their consumption of alcohol and drugs, can
affect the quality of their sperm and provoke death or disabilities of
the fetuses or children they father (Blakeslee 1991; Friedler 1993).

It stands to reason that sperm is at least as vulnerable to toxic
substances and radiation as eggs are, but this society's warped
ideology about childbearing and rearing focuses disproportionately on
the procreative functions of women. The usual justifications for what
employers refer to as their fetal protection policies are (1) that
fetuses may be more vulnerable than adult workers, and (2) that all of
a woman's eggs are laid down in her ovaries at the time she is born,
whereas men produce sperm continually. Therefore, the argument goes,
women's eggs age with them and accumulate potential injuries
throughout life, whereas sperm is always new.

Both arguments are flawed. Fetuses may be more vulnerable than adults,
but no hazards affect exclusively fetuses. The best way to protect
fetuses is to clean up workplaces and so protect the workers. As for
aging eggs and fresh sperm, sperm is produced continuously by virtue
of the fact that sperm-precursor cells keep on dividing. Men are born
with these precursor cells, just as women are with eggs. In fact, the
sperm-producing cells may be more vulnerable than eggs to radiation or
chemical injuries precisely because they keep dividing, which is when
cells are at greatest risk from environmental damage.

FULL TEXT:
<http://www.grhf.harvard.edu/gender/docs/hubbard.html>
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
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