Is Paid Family Leave Pro-life?
Georgetown Right to Life recently had the privilege of hosting Stephanie Summers, CEO of The Center for Public Justice (CPJ), to share her expertise on what her organization calls “family supportive policies.” One of the main policies that the CPJ focuses on is Paid Family Leave, an effort to provide both mothers and fathers paid time off for family caregiving duties. While I will only discuss Paid Family Leave in relation to the pro-life movement generally, I would encourage anyone interested in specific policy proposals to visit Families Valued, a page operated by the CPJ.
“The family is the most basic of human institutions” writes the CPJ in Guidelines for Government and Citizenship: Family. Ms. Summers led us through these guidelines, arguing that the government has a responsibility to support families as an institution and not just as a group of individuals. The CPJ guidelines continue on to state, “healthy families help nurture future citizens, prepare future employers and employees, decrease public costs resulting from fragmented families, and build up strong social and cultural capital.”
In providing Paid Family Leave, the government can not only affirm the importance of the family as an institution but also ensure financial stability for a greater number of parents. This safety net may help to decrease financial burdens and resulting family tension, foster parent-child bonding, and provide a more stable childhood for many. Ms. Summers proposed that the assurance of paid leave might even “change the game” surrounding abortion, reducing some of the economic concerns that lead women to seek a termination in the first place.
For background context, as of last year, only nine states plus the District of Columbia had enacted paid family and medical leave laws. Although no coherent, comprehensive federal law mandates that American employers provide Paid Family Leave to employees, national surveys show rising bipartisan support for Paid Family Leave.
Being pro-life is more than just standing out against abortion; being pro-life means respecting life from conception through natural death. Protecting the unborn is and should be an integral part of the pro-life mission but it cannot be to the exclusion of protecting other vulnerable populations: the disabled, elderly, economically disadvantaged, and unjustly treated. Many groups could benefit from smart family supportive policies.
Set aside Paid Family Leave for a moment; if there was a way to strengthen families economically, to reduce the number of lives taken because women feel unable to provide for a child, and to provide children with a more financially stable childhood, would it not be congruent with the pro-life mission to pursue it? As those who recognize the dignity of human life, we may disagree on specific Paid Family Leave policy proposals—as Ms. Summers herself noted, not all policy prescriptions in this realm may alleviate social stressors and help the individuals most in need of additional social support. While pro-lifers can reasonably and in good faith disagree on the specific political form such programs take, it is essential that we be willing to explore and more openly examine these proposed efforts to better support parents and families.
Mary Hope Rawlins is a junior in the NHS studying Nursing. She currently serves as On-Campus Service Chair and is the President-elect for the 2021-2022 academic year.
