Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

More about Prenatal Folic Acid and Autism

Excerpt from: Autism Speaks (click for full article)

 

Last month, Autism Speaks reported on a study that found reduced risk of autism in Norwegian children whose mothers took folic acid supplements around the time they became pregnant. (See our news story here and the full study here.)

Norway doesn’t require folic acid to be added to food, so prenatal vitamins are the only source of extra folic acid for many pregnant Norwegian women. By contrast, in the United States and Canada, flour and cereal have been fortified with folic acid since 1998.

Therefore, it’s reasonable to wonder whether prenatal folic acid supplements would have a similar effect here. It also raises the question of why autism rates have continued to increase in North America in the years since folic acid fortification of flour and cereals began.

Widiss on the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the ADA

Excerpt from: Disability Law (click for full article)

 

Pregnancy — a health condition that only affects women — raises complicated questions regarding the interaction of employment policies addressing sex discrimination and those addressing disability. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), enacted in 1978, mandates that employers “shall” treat pregnant employees “the same for all employment-related purposes” as other employees “similar in their ability or inability to work.” Despite the clarity of this language, some courts permit employers to treat pregnant employees less favorably than employees with other health conditions, so long as the employer does so pursuant to a “pregnancy-blind” policy such as accommodating only workplace injuries or disabilities protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under this reasoning, recent amendments expanding the scope of disabilities covered by the ADA could have the perverse effect of decreasing employers’ obligations to pregnant employees.

This Article argues that these decisions misinterpret the PDA. The same treatment clause creates a substantive, albeit comparative, accommodation mandate. Rather than focusing on the presence or absence of discriminatory intent, courts should simply assess whether the employer has, or under the ADA would be required to, accommodated limitations like those caused by pregnancy. This approach appropriately incorporates consideration of the costs that accommodations impose on employers but insulates that inquiry from still persistent misconceptions regarding pregnant women’s capacity and commitment to work.