On March 8, the Brazilian government enacted Law 14.311/2022, a last-minute effort to replace Law 14.151/21 that will be of little use to pregnant women or their employers. The new law came into force almost a year after it was proposed, and has practically lost its purpose because of the imminent end of the pandemic – and since protocols to prevent covid-19, such as masks and social distancing, are rapidly falling into disuse.
It’s important to note that the previous law – despite its crucial goal of protecting them – ended up harming pregnant women: many were covertly discriminated against and passed over in new admission processes; some employers were afraid to hire workers who, in a crisis, might have to be removed from their duties, many of them impossible to carry out remotely.
The benefits of the old law – protecting the health and the lives of pregnant women – are now supplanted by mandatory return to face-to-face work. Exceptions are made when there are special medical conditions or when remote work is possible, but mainly ignoring constitutional, collective rights. The new law simply allows work without any vaccination whatsoever, as long as the pregnant woman in question signs a term of responsibility under the guise of preserving private will, ignoring judgments by labor courts, as well as the health of colleagues and other workers who share public spaces.
The impression that remains is that preserving the lives of pregnant women and their unborn children matters even less now. Before the new law, they couldn’t leave their homes, because there were no vaccines and the risk of contagion was immense; now, despite the availability of vaccines, but with no legal obligation to vaccinate, relying only on self-responsibility, pregnant women can go to work, putting themselves and their babies at the same risk as at the beginning of the pandemic.
Since generating a life is protected by prenatal checkups, ensuring possible removal by Brazil’s social security system (INSS) in case of a risky pregnancy – as has always been possible –, pregnant women, as workers, should be treated in exactly the same way as all other workers.
Under the new law, pregnant women are to work from home only if their vaccination cycles are not complete. It happens that, currently, in Brazil, either a pregnant woman is already vaccinated or she doesn’t want to be, for whatever reason – but not completing vaccination cycles is increasingly rare and is true of only a small number of pregnant women.
So it’s obvious that a new law wasn’t necessary at all; if completing the vaccination cycle were impossible, this could be vouched for by a doctor, thus enabling the removal of a pregnant woman by social security, and ensuring her the right to the respective benefits.
In short, Brazilian members of Parliament need not have gone to so much work. It would be enough to repeal the old law, have pregnant women work in person as they always have and, if facing any kind of risk, with a medical report in hand, they could be sent home and start to receive their social security benefits.
Moreover, for those pregnant women who do not want to be vaccinated – for whatever reason and with no plausible justification – the treatment given to other people in the same situation could apply: that is, by encouraging vaccination and applying disciplinary penalties, including just cause, when applicable.
With protocols against the spread of the disease being overthrown, companies will soon be concerned only with periodic vaccines within the official public health agenda – established to avoid new variants and promote health in the work environment, thus providing greater resistance to the flu.
In this vein, in the near future the covid-19 vaccine will be part of everyone's lives and vaccination will not have to be proven, as is already the case with other vaccines.
Well, if the main idea was to repeal the old law and promote the return of pregnant women to face-to-face work, this new law is, at the very least, disastrous. Despite its pyrotechnics, it’s late and offers more doubts than solutions – and tends to become just another ineffective law.
In leaps and bounds, life and work must go on.
