Many people feel as if there are too many things in society that are considered a disability. Everyone is born with some disability, meaning we all have things that limit the things that we can and cannot do.
Being contested in Canada is the new inclusion of women going through the loss of having a miscarriage being able to claim disability. After all, there are normally no long-term physical effects of losing a baby. Proponents both for and against it are making their case for the eligibility of it in the workplace.
A miscarriage is a very emotionally draining experience. No matter if a woman is pregnant for a day or months, once she finds that she is carrying a baby, not only do her hormones and body chemistry change, her mentality does as well.
To a woman, the moment she conceives, her brain is filled with the potential of what is to come. She usually will begin to plan for the future and rearrange her life to make way for the new little life growing inside.
There are many instances when a miscarriage requires no medical attention at all. Spontaneous miscarriages result in as many as 10 percent of all pregnancies, without a woman even being aware. Even when a surgical procedure is required, a woman can usually return to normal activities within 72 hours.
According to slip and fall lawyers Philadelphia, that is what makes calling a marriage a disability so controversial. Who is to say how disabling it is for the individual or how long they need to recover from it? The truth is that it is different for every woman and in every circumstance.
The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has deemed miscarriage as a disability in the Winnie Mou cases. In 2013, Mou suffered a series of unfortunate events that led to her subsequent miscarriage.
Due to time off, she was let go from her position at MHPM Project Leaders because of her poor performance review. When fired, she consulted a lawyer to file suit against the company insisting that she had been wrongfully terminated.
The judge in the case deemed that the miscarriage she suffered was not a temporary or transient thing, but an event that was ongoing and causing her a great amount of sustained stress and grief. It was those mental disabilities that were interfering with her ability to perform her job. The emotional distress of the miscarriage was something that she was mentally not equipped to handle.
Although just one case, it has called into question the effects and long term nature of a miscarriage. The ruling opens the gate for many women in the workplace, who have suffered through a miscarriage, to make a disability claim.
Her lawyer insists that the ruling is nothing out of the ordinary. There are already statues in place that allow women accommodations for “pregnancy-related conditions”. That, however, becomes a gray area when the woman is no longer pregnant. If miscarriage is entered into the mix, what is to stop other pregnancy-related conditions such as abortion and stillbirths to be included as a disability in the work environment?
In 2012, a landmark study by the American Psychological Association found that women who suffer through a miscarriage can experience feelings of trauma and loss for years after the event. Commonly misunderstood, even after having a healthy baby, the feelings of loss are often not overridden.
That led to miscarriage being labelled as a traumatic event in the life of a woman and subject to long term need for mental health. In essence, that makes it no different than any other mental condition that requires medical care and disrupts the ability of a person to perform to their maximum capacity.
With a push for equity in the workplace, many feel that labelling a miscarriage as a disability, could set women back and make them appear to be inferior or unable to handle the stress of daily life. Others, who have experienced a miscarriage, understand that it is something that can affect you in profound and lasting ways. It, likewise, begs the question whether a man who is expecting a child and has the same loss and can also claim the same disabling condition.
Not a permanent ruling or systematic change in the definition of disability across the board, likely, it will be challenged many times in years to come. There is no doubt that medically a miscarriage is a substantial event in the life of a woman; there is a question as to how substantial it is, and if you include it as a disability. It remains to be seen whether it will be a ruling that will have broad scale change to the definition of disability for women.