As your constituent, I’m writing to thank you for sponsoring the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act.

Ensuring that all breastfeeding workers are protected by the Break Time for Nursing Mothers law is a common sense and important step toward eliminating the barriers to breastfeeding and ensuring all families have the opportunity to reach their infant feeding goals.

Breastfeeding supports healthy outcomes for moms and babies long after the breastfeeding relationship comes to an end. Everyone wants to do what is best for their baby, and most pregnant people and new mothers want to breastfeed. But too often, the return to work makes it difficult or even impossible to maintain.

Breastfeeding success shouldn't depend on your job type. Expanding coverage of the Break Time for Nursing Mothers Law to all employees is a bipartisan policy solution that we can all agree on.

This is an important issue for me and my community and I am thankful that it is a priority for you too. Thank you for taking action.

As your constituent, I’m writing to ask you to please take action to protect breastfeeding workers by supporting the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act (S. 1658).

The Break Time for Nursing Mothers law, (2010 Break Time law) provided critical protections to ensure that employees would have reasonable break time and a private place to pump breast milk during the work day. Unfortunately, the 2010 Break Time law’s placement within the part of the Fair Labor Standards Act that sets overtime meant that 9 million women — nearly one in four women of childbearing age — are excluded from coverage and have no clear right to break time and space to pump breast milk.

Without these protections, breastfeeding workers face serious health consequences, including risk of painful illness and infection, diminished milk supply, or inability to continue breastfeeding. According to a recent report from the University of California’s Center for WorkLife Law, the consequences of this coverage gap also include harassment, reduced wages, and job loss (https://bit.ly/2AvjZ2A).

The HHS Office on Women’s Health hosts the Supporting Nursing Moms at Work resource, which provides a critical link between the need for workplace support for breastfeeding families and the need for implementation guidance for their employers. The resource features examples from real businesses across the nation that have successfully implemented time and space accommodations for breastfeeding workers. The online resource even provides a user-friendly tool that employers can easily navigate to identify and implement solutions for work sites of all sizes and in all industries. (https://bit.ly/2XI7cru)

The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act was passed by the Senate HELP committee with unanimous, bipartisan support. As your constituent, I am hoping that you'll join as a cosponsor of this critical bill.

Ensuring that all breastfeeding workers are protected is a common sense and important step toward eliminating the barriers to breastfeeding and ensuring all families have the opportunity to reach their personal breastfeeding goals. Thank you for your consideration.