Can You Be Fired for Doing Fertility Treatments?
After blowing your mind with the idea that there are married women without children yesterday, I’d like to dial it back by talking about a settlement that happened this week in regards to a woman who was fired for doing fertility treatments and subsequently getting pregnant. It wasn’t what I expected to encounter via the EEOC. I clicked on the headline because it was about pregnancy. I didn’t realize it was also going to be about infertility.
To tell or not to tell your employer that you’re having trouble with family building?
We opted for disclosure because (1) my boss seemed understanding and (2) I was a teacher and the daily monitoring impacted my first period class. She shifted my schedule so first period was my planning period. On days when I had to go in for monitoring, I just stayed late and did my planning after school. She made fertility treatments possible; I’m not sure how I would have managed otherwise considering the amount of time I would have needed to take off from work in order to make treatments possible cycle after cycle.
I’ve heard more than one story of a teacher getting fired for doing IVF, but in those cases, it was because the act (IVF) conflicted with the religious ideology of the workplace (Catholic school). What about those of us who work at a secular institution? Can we be fired for missing out on work time?
The short answer — according to this EEOC statement — is no.
A female retail buyer in Honolulu informed the company that she began treatments for infertility in 2011. Upon disclosure of her disability, a company official allegedly made offensive comments about her intentions and became even less receptive upon disclosure of her pregnancy later that same year. The buyer was disciplined after disclosing her need for fertility treatments, and then discharged when she disclosed her travel restrictions due to her pregnancy. Such alleged conduct violates the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Later in the statement, it provides a concrete quote by Timothy Riera, the director of her local EEOC’s office:
“Federal law protects workers who are discriminated against due to their infertility, a covered disability. Workers who undergo fertility treatments should be treated like any other employee with a disability – with equal and careful consideration of reasonable accommodation requests.”
Of course, reasonable accommodation leaves a lot open to interpretation. But isn’t missing work or trying to navigate work while infertile one of the most stressful things about the financial side of infertility? The lack of flexibility in the workplace foments the stress already present with family building. Think about how many people would do a BETTER job at work if they didn’t have to waste energy with the tension of trying to secretly balance treatments and work, but instead had employers work directly with employees to help them perform well while addressing a medical situation. This, of course, is not just true for infertility. It’s true for every medical situation that impacts work time.
Telling my employer could have gone otherwise. If she was a less understanding woman, telling her could have bitten me in the ass. Because, sure, it’s all well and good to have laws in place, and there is always the option to pursue legal consequences if you are fired like the woman above, but all of that takes money and energy. I think we all know that people are unfairly fired all the time. It was a lucky break that I had years to build up my reputation at the school BEFORE I had to use that good will for treatments. It was a lucky break that my boss was an understanding woman.
Technically adoption should be covered as well — right? — though I’m not certain since this case only covers fertility treatments.
Are you (or have you been) open with your employer about family building?
28 comments
I was not. But we chose not to tell anyone, not a single person, so that was simply in keeping with our choice overall. I, too, was a teacher but my clinic, just by chance, was minutes from my school and had appointments starting very early in the morning. I was only forced to miss my 1st class once and I knew it would happen in advance. Because it was not permissable to take only one hour for “sick” leave and I felt using an entire sick day was silly, I opted to stretch the truth and say I had car trouble the night before and needed to take my car in for service very early. I felt bad lying but it was the better option.
Given that my first cycle ended very badly and I did not want to then have to talk about it, I’m glad I did it that way. Also, for me, I knew that even if I told my boss I didn’t want to tell all of my co-workers and my boss was not known for keeping confidences.
It did get more complicated for me when I miscarried the day before I was supposed to have a very important role in our graduation ceremony. I had to decide if I should suck it up and go, feeling the lowest in my life, or tell and miss the day. Because to miss something that big, I would have had to come completely clean. I chose to go. I know my co-workers knew something was off but I still think I made the right choice.
I wasn’t open about out treatments when we were trying for Owen unless it directly conflicted with my work. Which it did, the very last cycle. And not surprisingly, it was not taken well. No one came right out and said that it was a bad decision, but I was told that I should have “planned the timing” better, because our last transfer happened the first day of our quarter review. I didn’t bother to explain that I had zero control over the process, I just nodded and got out of the meeting as soon as I could.
Treatments for our second child have taken place over enough years that I’ve been at two different companies. With the first one, I only told one of the women at work when I miscarried the first time – because I was at work when I saw blood and I needed to get out of there ASAP and couldn’t hold it together enough to lie about it. I was the only person in that department with a young child, and though my manager asked me often if I wanted more kids, I never felt comfortable enough to talk about our IF and treatments.
And when I left there and started working for my current boss, I did tell her about our struggles when she revealed she had a rough time getting pregnant with her second, though she never did treatments. She seemed pretty open minded about it, so I was honest about the fact that we had embryos remaining and might try again at some point in the future. And I did mention that I had m/c #2 last fall at some point in the winter – after the fact.
But really, as time has gone on, I’m reluctant to tell ANYONE about our cycles. Not because I’m afraid of being discriminated against, but more because really, what’s the point? We really have a rough time getting – and staying- pregnant, so there’s no real news until we get pregnant AND make it to 12 weeks. I’d rather wait and tell work about a pregnancy when there’s an actual chance that I’d have to take some sort of leave. Until then it’s just noise.
xoxo
I was not precisely open. I told my boss that I was going to have a lot of doctor appointments, and would need to take or make up time. I didn’t tell her specifically what it was for. I didn’t think I should have to either, as medical information is private, unless it affects your ability to do your job. However, my situation was easier, as we can accumulate paid leave time, including sick time, which can be used for appointments. That’s a major reason why I continue to work at my job, no matter how ridiculous things get – the flexibility is unbeatable.
I was open. I worked for a public relations agency that was all women. Of the three partners, two of them had gone through fertility treatments. One did IVF. They treated me like complete shit. If you’ve read my blog, you know that while I seemed to get pregnant pretty easily once the treatments started, I repeatedly lost my pregnancies. It was literally the worst year of my life. During my review last December, with two losses under my belt, they tried to insinuate that it was interfering with work. It wasn’t. I had 1) never missed a deadline, 2) never discussed it at work (only a few close friends knew but we never discussed it during company time), 3) up until that point, never used it as an excuse to miss any work trips. I was furious. They were so bitchy and catty about the whole thing. They even froze my salary and told me no one was getting raises or promotions – then sent out an email 5 days later announcing 6 promotions for the new year. Then came January. I couldn’t go on a business trip because I was starting injections for the first time and had to go in to be monitored on cycle day 3 and be trained on how to do the shots at home. Shit hit the absolute fan. One of the partners was so terrible to me about it, I almost quit on the spot. But I got pregnant and tried to hold out for my due date in October. After the way they treated me, I knew I would never go back after maternity leave. But, of course, the worst happened in March and we lost the heartbeat at 7 weeks 5 days. I couldn’t go into work unexpectedly and had to miss a week because of the misoprostol pills and the hideous way I had to miscarry at home. My boss – the one that did IVF – sent me a series of ridiculously insensitive emails, the first of which, asking how my first thoughts weren’t how my sudden absence would impact her business. I was floored. I took the week off, went in the following Monday and quit. It was the best decision I ever made. I should have gotten a lawyer and sued the shit out of them, but because of everything we were going through, I couldn’t focus. In hindsight, I never should have said anything. But I thought honesty was the best policy. In my case, it hurt me.
I did not disclose. I don’t think I would have had problems, if I did, but we really didn’t tell anyone, much less our employers — just not our style.
I am sure that some people guessed, & if they cared to look, they would have seen appointments marked “clinic” in my datebook on my desk. 😉 My bosses at the time weren’t (& still aren’t) particularly sticky on clockwatching… I am usually one of the first people into the office in the morning, and on clinic mornings (bloodwork & ultrasounds), even though I would arrive later than usual, I still got there ahead of most people most of the time. On those days, I would try to compensate by taking a shorter lunch hour, etc. For various tests, etc., that were scheduled midday, I would simply say it was a medical appointment, and I think dh & I may have taken personal days when it came to the actual IUIs.
It was stressful, though, no doubt about it, and there were many days that I wasn’t feeling 100% &/or my mind was not entirely on my work. But overall, I don’t think my performance suffered that much, and the work still got done in the end.
I did meet many women in the waiting room who had switched to part-time or quit their jobs in order to focus on treatment. I was fortunate in that all my appointments were just a few subway stops away from my office. Some of these women were travelling from a few hours away (I remember one coming in from Niagara Falls, which is about two hours in good traffic) and one came all the way from Sudbury, about six hours north of here. She had most of her cycle monitoring done locally and then came to the city for the major stuff.
As we are persuing adoption and will only have 2 weeks notice before taking our baby home I had to be completely open with my boss. We however have a good relationship and she is very supportive.
I didn’t disclose anything specifically. Thankfully, as a university professor, I largely set the times of my classes and could avoid problems with monitoring. I did need to miss an occasional meeting or office hour for IUI or IVF…and just framed it as a doctor’s app’t or medical procedure. Honest, but not completely forthcoming.
I was very open with my boss, and I’m so lucky that she was understanding.
I work in a small art gallery, there are only 5 employees, so we all have a “cover for each other” mentality if someone needs time off. I was open with my boss basically from the beginning, who in turn, let me come in late after blood draws, and leave work early for appointments. Now, I never had to do IVF, and with my RE being two hours away, I’m sure we would have had to do some planning to cover my time off with almost daily monitoring, but I”m confident that if it had gone that far, she would have been willing to work with me.
I’m lucky in the fact that a lot of the work I do is on the computer, so I’m able to work from home if need be. This was helpful after my HSG when I was allowed to work from home instead of coming in after the procedure.
My husband’s job, on the other hand, has been somewhat different. My husband decided not to tell his boss until we needed to take time off to go to our RE appointment. This meant that I went to every OB/GYN appointment alone which wasn’t ideal, but necessary. When we did move to our RE, my husband decided to tell his boss the basics of what was going on, and his boss, being a family man, told him to take care of what he needed to. Unfortunately this meant getting up at 4:30 am for 7 am appointments, but that allowed my husband to miss as little work as possible.
All in all, both my boss and my husband’s boss have been very understanding. I joke with my husband that we’re going to have to name our child(ren) after them since they were so helpful and understanding.
I am currently on my employer’s ‘attendance management’ shitlist because of time lost due to miscarriages. It doesn’t help that I have just lost more time due to two back to back bouts of pneumonia. The ironic thing is that the whole reason I probably developed the pneumonia was at least in part due to the fact that I have been completely stressed out at the idea that my employer (according to their policy) has the right to fire me over my absences over the last couple of years. I have been completely open about my situation, because I know that being open increases my chances of keeping my job- it would not be in their best interest to fire me for having miscarriages. I am blown away at the lack of sympathy out there for infertiles, and can’t believe this sort of thing actually happens.
This is not the same scenario, but my employer changed its paid maternity leave policy to be more generous for birth than adoption while I was in the process of adopting (and I know I’m lucky to have any paid leave at all). I was advised by an older male partner that if I was adopting for fertility reasons, I might have enough grounds to file a lawsuit. Not one that would win, probably, but enough to file, he said. I didn’t – instead I complained enough to be grandfathered into the old policy and had a modest but still unequal adoption stipend implemented for future adopters. I suspect this EEOC opinion would have given my hypothetical lawsuit a bit more oomph.
I was open, though it was really something out in the open prior to my being hired. I work in a techie field, and they found my (not very hidden, because I didn’t particularly care) blog, so they knew going into it that I was dealing with this, and that I might need some time-off considerations. It was actually nice to just have it be out in the open because I never really had to address it. On the downside, of course it meant everyone knew my business, but I knew blogging about it given my field was a risk in that department!
““Federal law protects workers who are discriminated against due to their infertility, a covered disability. Workers who undergo fertility treatments should be treated like any other employee with a disability – with equal and careful consideration of reasonable accommodation requests.””
Sure would be nice if insurance companies saw it as a disability, then!
I told no one at work when I was going through infertility treatment. At the time, I was working at two different private law firms, where anything that takes time away from work is frowned upon and can be career-limiting. (And don’t even get me started on how my firm violated the FMLA in regard to my time off after the birth of my twins. . . and without any compelling reason, IMO, as I was on an unpaid leave without any cases assigned to me.)
In months when I had early morning commitments on my calendar that conflicted with monitoring appointments and could not be moved, I simply skipped treatment.
Interesting. I went into your post expecting it to be a (complete) horror story, so it was nice to be surprised.
I was not open; my DH was. My lack of openness mostly reflected not concerns about treatment per se (though as my efforts dragged on and on, I came to be glad I hadn’t shared my plans) but my sense that there is a “mommy track” that affects the vast majority of female professionals who are mothers or are perceived as prospective mothers and I didn’t want to be on it. That is, I don’t mind being on it now that I am a mother, but I didn’t want to land on it when there was a real risk of not being a mother. And just to be clear, I’m not OK with it existing — I think (and there are data to support) that mothers bear disproportionate salary-and-advancement discrimination, and that that is wrong. But if I’m going to be stuck with that penalty (what with this annoying business of living in the real world and all), I want there at least to be a benefit to it (aka I get to be a mom). So.
And my employers are and were very reasonable and lovely people and I’m sure would have been very supportive. But I believe those kinds of biases (mommy tracking) are insidious and often unintentional and I didn’t want to go there (conveniently, as my DH had 2 grown kids I could easily roll my eyes if anyone asked about childbearing intentions and truthfully tell them that and say that “he doesn’t think he has the energy to start all over again!” and thereby, well, mislead them.).
My clinic was literally 200 (?) yards from my office — I worked at a university, it was part of the affiliated medical center — and I would insist on parking on the second floor of the nearby parking garage (not my already-paid-for office lot) and taking a circuitous route to reach the clinic, lest I bump into a colleague. My DH thought I was nuts. My work schedule was often flexible, but if I needed an explanation I told people I was having dental work done. As I completely neglected my teeth while pursuing IF tx (to save money needed for IVF) they may have wondered about that one (or maybe they thought “thank gooodness, at last”).
My employer provides equal paid leave for both giving birth (or having a partner give birth) and adopting. I’m not sure where surrogacy falls in that metric or how FMLA (which kicks in after the paid leave for those who want and can afford to use it) applies — I think it treats adoptive infants as having the same rights to parental care (unpaid leave) as infants born into a family? I do know, however, that parents who foster infants at least in my state do NOT qualify for FMLA, because I know someone who did that and was having to juggle baby-care responsibilities with work, with no option of using unpaid leave.
I was open but I was working part time and was allowed to pick my schedule to an extent, by informing a month in advance of available days. I also picked my job because I primarily worked 2nd/3rd shift so it didn’t conflict with appointments, and days I did work 1st my boss knew I had to leave asap and I scheduled around it. My boss was understanding when I went through miscarriages and needed time off for bed rest too.
Luckily my husband and myself both had very flexible jobs, and bosses who were able to work with us. I know that isn’t always the case, and honestly that’s part of the reason we stays with our jobs or sought them out specifically. My husband had already been at his job and luckily that worked out fine, I sought employment where I did specifically to work around treatments and college schedules.
In the beginning I kept it to myself from work, but at some point I did tell a co-worker (he went through IVF with his wife because he had a vasectomy) or two (she had a miscarriage a year earlier). About a year before I finally got pregnant, I did tell my two immediate bosses and they were totally amazing.
We are able to have flex time at my work, so I am able to take a long lunch, come earlier or leave later, so long as my work gets done and I don’t get too behind in hours. That said, I don’t think my getting time off from work for appointments or needing to stay home because of transfers was much different before or after telling. Although, maybe it was a bit easier. I know one boss let me have a week off as “sick” when in actually it should have been my own time. It was nice though having them know and mostly understand on the days I was having a bad/rough day.
And, I honestly don’t think Finnish companies could fire someone for infertility treatments. It’s hard enough to fire someone here as it is…
I have only been open with a few coworkers who are actually more like close friends. Those are the people who have helped me actually be able to do treatments by covering for me. I normally travel EVERY week and obviously that isn’t possible while needing to go to my clinic multiple days in a row (and not having 100% sure idea about what days those will be). It is getting harder to explain to my boss why I am not traveling certain weeks. I just keep it vague and say I need to go to the Doctor. I was also vague about the exact reason I had to have surgery early in the year. I am pretty sure with the surgery combined with my mysterious doctors appointments during work every month he thinks there is something seriously wrong with me. I actually think he would be supportive but its more just awkward. I am also likely changing jobs at the beginning of the year and really stressing about how this will affect treatments. Its just another stress that makes things more and more difficult for us in infertile land.
I did not disclose my infertility treatments to my supervisor at the time, though several of my coworkers were aware of the nature of my medical appointments. However, when I switched employers and we started the adoption process, I was much more open about both my continued medical appointments and any adoption-related details. I think I felt more comfortable with my second employer and supervisor, and I felt I could open up further without fear of retribution. In fact, my supervisors at the latter organization knew about our match and K’s birth before my husband (since I was at work when both events occured).
I was very open. As a teacher, all of my places of employment ave been heavily-staffed with fellow females, many of whom got pregnant each year. I was always open about our struggles and our treatments. That being said, I did catch flak at one school for time off due to a miscarriage (my first). I quit shortly thereafter. Since then, we’ve been careful to schedule treatments over the summer so as to minimize the impact on work. I’ve missed more work this year (during pregnancy) than the past three years.
I wasn’t. I knew that things would have gotten difficult for me once I was pregnant, so giving them the heads up that I was trying to get pregnant wasn’t wise. I ended up quitting my job because it was impossible to get the time off. I ended up taking a job with the same employer but in a different department a few years later. It was just as hard being pregnant working for them that I thought it was going to be. Bleu.
Great Topic, Mel, and one that I have been wanting to write a post about.
I disclosed, because that was the only way I extracted the reprieve that I needed.
I’m beginning to wonder if any of those laws really do anyone any good.
Sure, for those with the time, money and energy to fight, it helps but everyone else? Not so much. I think.
I have a relatively mild to moderate disability. Unfortunately it affects by balance and ability to stand/walk for moderate to long periods, and I am sick frequently (or get injured). Because of this I have never been able to get a job. While it’s true that the law states reasonable accommodations should be made, it also says that if an employer feels you are unsafe to yourself or others or has to say find a temp for you on a regular basis, they have every right not to hire and/or fire you.
I’m honestly surprised a lot of pregnant and disabled (not to mention the disabled who become pregnant) people ever manage to get/keep jobs.
Though I suppose, extremely healthy pregnant women and people with very mild disabilities are probably tremendously helped by the laws and that’s a lot of people, so it is a good thing.
But still, I wonder how many pregnant and disabled people, these laws were truly intended to help, are actually helped by them. Because, if I’m not mistaken, they were originally to help more borderline people such as myself with more moderate disabilities and pregnancies that may have some restrictions and complications.
Sorry, just sharing thoughts.
I don’t think in South Africa you could get fired for that. I disclosed it all three times, and my boss is very fair and kept it quiet. I also later had to disclose that we were in the adoption process because I could literally disappear from one day to the next. I never told him the outcomes and sometimes wonder if that was unfair of me, but I guess he could tell. I know that the adoption process will put a bit of a glass ceiling on things for me, that’s only fair enough, they can’t commit me to big projects if I might disappear overnight. But I’m not all that far off giving the adoption agency a call to say enough is enough, it’s been more than a year of silence and the pain of having my life on hold for something that is becoming exceedingly unlikely to happen is really starting to outweigh the potential joy of parenthood. And that is something that I will certainly be letting my boss in on because this will be one place where my motives on that front won’t be questioned!
I disclosed my treatment to all of my employers. Because I have a fairly autonomous job in education, it was easy for me to rearrange my schedule and slip out unnoticed, so they didn’t have much cause for concern. But…I also think I have been very lucky to have the employers that I’ve had. They have all been fair, respectful, and family friendly. That last part is what it’s about, as far as I’m concerned. Family building is about family, in the same way pregnancy and/or heading home to your sick child is. So, if an employer is intolerant of the latter, I think this generalizes to IF. On the other hand, I also think it’s possible for an employer to be supportive of already existing families and inflexible with regard to treatment because of personal beliefs. Either way, I truly can’t imagine how much more difficult the process would have been without that understanding.
I only disclosed when I had to. Also a teacher, my first IUI I managed to completely do in a December holiday, so that was secret. The second one in a June/ July, but I was worried that it wasn’t going to fit, so I told her. In the end I didn’t need to take time off and I told her when it didn’t work and she was sympathetic. Then when we were going to do IVF I told her again, as this time it had to be during school, although I tried to make it fit. In the end I didn’t need to, because I got pregnant just before.
I think if you have to take time off you kind of have to tell, and it sucks, because of the additional pressure, but the thing is, it is better to be open about what is happening than have them just jump to wrong conclusions about where you are. It probably also depends on what kind of boss you have.
I did not tell my supervisor at work. I did tell her that I was having health issues related to not getting my period (which was true, I was annovulatory), and that diagnosis and treatment would sometimes mean that I would need to go in for blood work or tests with little notice. But I have a pretty flexible schedule at work. Because my supervisor was very perceptive, she figured out what was going on, but never said anything until I told her I was pregnant. I did tell one other co-worker what was going on, and I was much more open about our fertility treatments after I was pregnant.
I’ve recently been on the other end of this, too, now that I’m in a supervisory role. I had one of the women who works for me tell me that she and her husband were undergoing fertility treatments. Honestly, a lot of people that I work with have medical issues of a lot of different types, and the accommodations for her treatments were no more difficult to work around than accommodations for medical appointments of other types for other employees.
I know that when I was going through it, it felt like it was taking over my life and that the fertility treatments must surely be impacting everyone else. It’s been helpful now, to see in retrospect, that they really were not burdensome (at least not at our work) – certainly no more so than other issues that others have. We’re all human. It is almost certain that we will all have to deal with something at some point – if not our own medical issues, then a family members’. I wish that more employers were more cognizant of that and could be more flexible and accommodating to everyone.
I’m so glad I got to read this one and the comments! I missed it on the first go around.
I love this quote by her director: “Workers who undergo fertility treatments should be treated like any other employee with a disability – with equal and careful consideration of reasonable accommodation requests.” Honestly, this is the first time I’ve actually considered infertility to be a disability like any other for work purposes … interesting.
When we underwent fertility treatments, I did fully disclose. This was stressful in itself … I got time off, but deadlines for clients started being scheduled around my ovulation times and prospective retrieval dates. Very embarrassing and a little too open for me.
We switched to adoption – my workplace actually changed their mat leave policy so that I was entitled to the salary top up like other moms … this has been recently changed back to the original policy to exclude all adoptive parents. I’m frustrated to no end about this, but because I was treated so well, I’m hesitant to kick up the dust just yet (returning to work in January). My workplace adoption policy is something that certainly needs to be examined more closely … they follow the law to the letter for adoptive moms, but for bio moms they offer pay top up for a portion of the leave.
And yes, the policy explicitly states “biological moms” … which leads me to a whole new level of anger … so if I were to use a surrogate but my eggs, I’d be entitled to the leave, but if I were to use donor eggs and my own uterus, I wouldn’t get the top up??!!! Obviously the policy makers have never been through infertility or have any idea how complex it can become.
I chose not to tell my employers (a husband and wife couple) and was fired after taking two days off that my doctor mandated be taken after my transfer and due to the OHSS. It was a small law firm and I had only been there three months; they actually fired me the day my medical benefits would have gone into effect.
I would have had no problem telling my bosses, but the wife’s a talker, can’t help herself. Had she known, her whole family would have known and all her friends. It’s a small town, so I couldn’t tell her; felt too vulnerable as it was.
When I returned from the two days, they fired me, no reason given just said that it wasn’t working out. The week prior they had told me how happy they were that I was there and the wife had asked to come over to see my new home. Who would do that if they were planning to fire you? I had taken the day off to have the egg retrieval, which was fine, but those extra two days sent them over the edge. I was otherwise an excellent employee with excellent references. Missing the three days in three months made me seem like a flake to them I guess.
I wasn’t crazy about them anyway; it was just a job, but it hurt because I was also trying to get pregnant and felt punished by them on top of being unable to reproduce.
A teacher fired out for doing IVF treatments? Hard to believe. It’s sad to hear these kind of things. IVF treatments are mainly done for infertility issues.