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Bill would allow workers to take family leave to grieve death of child, pregnancy loss

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Bill would allow workers to take family leave to grieve death of child, pregnancy loss

By Sophie Nieto-Munoz
Bill would allow workers to take family leave to grieve death of child, pregnancy loss
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Women who delivered a stillborn baby or terminated a pregnancy due to medical reasons would be eligible for bereavement days under the bill. (Getty Images)

Years after an ectopic pregnancy led to surgery, Stacey Matarazzo Dinburg became pregnant again through in-vitro fertilization. But nine months later, she delivered a stillborn baby and went home broken-hearted. 

She suffered from daily panic attacks and severe depression, along with the physical pain that came with recovering from a C-section. Ineligible for bereavement leave at her job, she returned to work “far too soon,” she said, as financial burdens added to her stress. 

“As a mother of a stillborn child, I firmly believe that families who suffered as devastating a loss of a child or pregnancy should receive at least the same time off as those who bring home a healthy child,” she told the Senate Labor Committee Thursday. “These families require a great deal of support. Pregnancy and infant loss is a lifelong sentence.”

Dinburg was one of several parents and advocates who shared their heartbreaking stories of grief before the panel advanced legislation to require employers to provide bereavement leave to grieving parents.

Under the bill, workers would be eligible for bereavement leave for the death of a child, miscarriage, or stillbirth under the Family Leave Act or Temporary Disability Benefits Law. Workers could also seek bereavement leave for an unsuccessful adoption that had been pending, a pregnancy terminated for medical reasons, a failed fertility treatment, and ectopic or molar pregnancies. Spouses or domestic partners of someone who had a miscarriage or stillbirth would be eligible for the expanded bereavement leave.

Depending on the circumstances, people could take between seven and 21 days of bereavement leave. 

New Jersey employers must provide family leave if they have 30 or more employees and the worker has been employed for at least one year and worked at least 1,000 hours in that timespan.

Bill would allow workers to take family leave to grieve death of child, pregnancy loss
Sen. Vince Polistina (Hal Brown for New Jersey Monitor)

Bill sponsor Sen. Vince Polistina (R-Atlantic) said the measure would give people the time off to heal and grieve during “some of the most traumatic experiences that people will have in their lives.”

About 10 to 20% of known pregnancies end in loss before the 20th week, according to the Mayo Clinic. The actual number is likely higher because miscarriages can happen before people realize they’re pregnant.

New Jersey has a higher rate of stillbirths compared to the rest of the country, with 6.2 deaths per 1,000 births compared to the national average of 5.7 deaths, according to state data from 2021. The Department of Health estimates as many as 700 stillbirths occur each year in New Jersey.

Yarrow Willman-Cole, workplace justice director at New Jersey Citizen Action, asked lawmakers to clarify sections of the bill that discuss whether the leave is covered by the Family Leave Act or temporary disability insurance and eliminate the different lengths of time someone can take. 

She also expressed concerns about the bill creating a record of workers taking leave because of a stillbirth or abortion. She said this could have unintended consequences in a “world where reproductive freedoms are increasingly under attack and even criminalized.” 

Jackie Mancinelli, who lost her child one hour after he was delivered via emergency C-section, said she was only granted bereavement leave at her job in a school because a secretary approved the days without getting the official OK. She recalled a year prior, when she had a miscarriage and continued to teach students “despite knowing that the baby in my womb already died and I needed surgery to remove him or her.”

Mancinelli runs Start Healing Together, a nonprofit supporting families across the state struggling with pregnancy loss and infertility. She wants New Jersey to become the fourth state to protect parents suffering from unexpected loss and “tell mothers, fathers, and parents that their grief is valid and worth being protected.”

“When we force parents to return to work while grieving, while bleeding, while breast milk is still coming in, we tell them that their experience doesn’t matter. We tell them that we think so little of them that they’re not even worth bereavement leave,” she said. 

The bill advanced unanimously Thursday and overwhelmingly passed the Assembly in September. The measure still faces a floor vote in the Senate before it heads to the governor’s desk for a signature or veto.