Divided over abortion, but joining forces for women’s workplace rights

When South Carolina passed a law last year to provide pregnant workers and new mothers with more protections in the workplace, it was driven by an unlikely alliance: supporters of abortion rights working alongside religious groups that oppose them.

“We were all on the same page pragmatically,” said Ashley Crary Lidow, associate director of policy and government relations at the Women’s Rights & Empowerment Network in Columbia, S.C., which supports abortion rights. Palmetto Family Council, a religious advocacy group in Columbia, also said the partnership had “raised some eyebrows” around the Statehouse.

After all, the two groups opposed each other on abortion legislation just the day before the workplace bill hit the Senate floor.

As a series of states have moved to put tighter restrictions on abortion — a polarizing issue at a polarized moment in American politics — another, nascent movement is simmering in the background: Unusual partners are coming together to strengthen workplace safeguards for women.

The new laws help begin to address what advocates on both sides of the abortion divide see as a disconnect. Many of the states that have recently enacted more restrictive abortion laws, they say, have some of the weakest support systems for pregnant women and new mothers in the workplace.

“In states that do not have strong legal protections for pregnant workers, which include almost all of the South, we hear from women all the time experiencing discrimination on the job or forced to risk their health at work,” said Dina Bakst, a co-founder and co-president of A Better Balance, an advocacy group from New York that is supportive of abortion rights.

Like South Carolina, Kentucky recently established laws that require many employers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers and new...