A post-Roe agenda should include paid maternity leave for state employees, Attorney General Lynn Fitch said to lawmakers Wednesday. 

This recommendation is part of her office’s Empowerment Project, which was launched in 2023 after abortion in Mississippi became illegal – a “game changer,” Fitch told members of the Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families. 

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann tasked the Senate group with reviewing the needs of Mississippi families and children from birth to age 3, following the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that allowed the state’s near-total abortion ban to take effect.

Mississippi has no paid family leave on the books. Currently state employees may take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.

There are around 85,000 state employees – including public school teachers and staff and faculty from public universities and colleges – and tens of thousands of Mississippi women could benefit from legislation offering paid maternity leave. 

It’s a critical workforce issue, Fitch said in response to a question from Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, and it could be the deciding factor for someone choosing between a private sector job and a public sector job. 

“This is a great tool, a great resource, to have these women in public service and to keep them there,” she said. 

Mississippi has the nation’s lowest workforce participation rate. Despite the fact there are more working-age women than men, women have a lower rate at 48.5%. 

Last year, a bill authored by Boyd to give state employees six weeks of paid maternity leave died in the Public Health committee, chaired by Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory. Bryan did not respond to a request for comment from Mississippi Today by the time this story published. 

Fitch urged lawmakers to reconsider their decision this year.

“Coming up in this session I’d like for you to consider paid maternity leave for state employees … I know many times here we look at who else has done that, and I just want to tell you that Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, North Carolina, Louisiana and Virginia have all passed these laws. And so I would encourage you to take a hard look at this.”

Fitch, who petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the Dobbs case that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, has faced pressure to advocate for policies that would benefit low-income women in the state with the highest maternal mortality and poverty rates. 

The five pillars of her Empowerment Project, Fitch said, are making quality child care affordable and accessible; promoting workforce flexibility; improving child support enforcement; fixing the state’s broken foster care and adoption systems; and giving women the opportunities and resources to “upscale and educate.”

Mississippi is one of only 10 states not to expand Medicaid to the working poor under the Affordable Care Act. And while pregnant women making less than 194% of the federal poverty level – roughly $30,000 annually for a single mother – are eligible for Medicaid, a policy that would streamline the application process and provide timely prenatal care only just became law in Mississippi and is currently awaiting federal approval. 

Fitch lauded lawmakers for several measures passed in the last two years, including 12 months postpartum coverage for mothers on Medicaid, tax credits for crisis pregnancy centers and Safe Haven Baby Boxes. 

Fitch said the baby boxes are “a very safe, anonymous way for a very courageous young mother to place her child in the care of others,” and that the state will increase the number of them. 

Committee members weren’t able to ask follow-up questions to Fitch, who also addressed child support enforcement and the foster care system, due to her schedule. 

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