Elaine Loughlin: Delaying the Reproductive Leave Bill means business trumps compassion
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“We’re sorry for your loss,” said the Government to 14,000 women and their partners who will face the grief of miscarriage this year.
“We’re sorry for your pain,” the Government told the one in six couples who suffer fertility issues, many undergoing the grueling cycle of injections and early morning hospital appointments.
“But we’re just not sorry enough.” The Reproductive Leave Bill drafted by the Labour Party is fairly straightforward: It aims to provide an entitlement to reproductive leave of up to 20 days for workers who suffer a miscarriage, and up to 10 days for those seeking treatments such as IVF.
Currently a person is entitled to full maternity leave if they suffer a stillbirth or miscarriage after 24 weeks or their baby has a birth weight of at least 500g. But no supports acknowledge earlier loss.
In delaying the bill to introduce an entitlement to reproductive leave, this week the Government decided that women should continue to remain silent in their workplaces about the trauma of early miscarriage and should use up annual leave to attend multiple appointments for IVF treatments.
An uncomfortable silence shrouded the loss of a pregnancy and infant deaths in this country for many years.
Very-much-wanted babies were relegated to limbo, with the Church ruling that those who died before being baptised could not enter heaven.
We are now, thankfully, a more open society, but dealing with miscarriage and fertility struggles can still be a very lonely journey.
Disappointingly, just 10 TDs spoke on the issue — and none from the ranks of Fianna Fáil, the Social Democrats, or the Green Party — during a Dáil debate that was scheduled to run for around two hours on Thursday evening.
For many, adult life can be sorted into eras: The post-school years where you find your freedom; and the marriage years when every second weekend seems to be taken up with a stag, hen party, or wedding. Then there are the fertility years, which minister of state Neale Richmond, having celebrated his 40th birthday last year, is now in the middle of.
“I am at an age where, every couple of weeks, I get a phone call from friends, family members, or upset couples, many of whom are at a stage where they are starting to give up as they do not think this will be for them,” he told the Dáil this week.
“They are making that journey through IVF.
But Richmond, who was the only Government member to speak on the issue apart from fellow minister of state Martin Heydon, then cautioned that it is an “extremely complex policy area” that requires “detailed consideration and assessment” in advance of progressing legislation.
Richmond warned that “further potential regulatory impacts” need to be assessed with regard to the employer as the proposed leave would place “a new and considerable financial requirement” on businesses.
“It is therefore only right that we engage with businesses on this.”
With the clock ticking down on this coalition a 12-month timed amendment means that this bill will “never see the light of day again”, as Labour’s Ged Nash put it.
Providing an entitlement to leave does not necessarily mean that workers will avail of it; not all employees will take five statutory sick leave days this year, for example.
Various supports afforded to workers are a possibility that employers must be mindful of, but are not a certainty.
While the conversation around pregnancy loss and fertility struggles is becoming a more open one, for many couples it’s an issue they chose to deal with privately.
Regardless of how far we have come, many in the workforce facing into the uncertainty of fertility treatment would still choose not to notify their employer they may be taking six months of maternity leave. It should not be the case, but having risen to a certain point in their careers women still feel this way.
Speaking about the “groundswell of feeling” that she has received from women across the country, Labour leader Ivana Bacik told the Dáil she had been moved by the personal stories of trauma of pregnancy loss, and the fertility experiences of people who had never before shared it with others.
“This silence may have been due to stigma or just because it was so difficult to speak about their experience. As we know, reproductive healthcare has for far too long been marginalised as an issue in this country.”
The Labour reproductive leave campaign began five years ago through consultation with the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation.
Bacik detailed how teachers had reported having to return to work while still experiencing the emotional and physical symptoms of their experience — some of them even still bleeding.
“All of them were traumatised by the experience and many felt unable to speak about it in their workplaces,” she said. “If they were teachers, they felt unable to speak about it to their principals.
“All these women were united in not being able to acknowledge their experience in a formal way in the workplace nor indeed to have any formal recognition of having had an early miscarriage or of having had to undergo IVF treatment.”
The current situation means women going through fertility treatment often exhaust annual holidays, teachers defer IVF cycles until the summer, people who miscarry use up sick leave. As Sinn Féin’s Louise O’Reilly pointed out, it forces workers to be “dishonest”.
“It is important to say that when a woman has had a miscarriage, she might not be physically sick and it is dishonest to produce a sick certificate where someone is not physically sick,” O’Reilly said during the debate.
“However, that does not necessarily mean women are able to go to work. They may not have a physical ailment or be required to even attend the hospital, but that does not mean they are able and fit to go to work.”
The introduction of such a measure, regardless of how many avail of it, would be a clear acknowledgment of the pain and struggle women and their partners go through.
Rolling out such a support would be a signal to the 50 women in Ireland who will today suffer a miscarriage that their grief is real, and that it is not something to be quickly brushed aside. The introduction of fertility leave would also recognise those who juggle a working life with injections, scans, procedures, and egg collections.
In delaying the Reproductive Leave Bill, the Government has decided that business trumps compassion.