Before the baby comes, it finally hits that soon there won’t be any time for yourself. In fact, there will be many days where new mothers won’t even be able to shower, let alone enjoy a glass of wine in front of the television. Some women use their last month of pregnancy to indulge a little before the inevitable happens. Soon, New Yorkers will have the opportunity to take that indulgence a step further.
New York City will give pregnant women the right to “their one damn drink” at public bars. This drink is guaranteed by the city’s Human Rights Commission, who recently released a new set of guidelines that prevent bars from turning pregnant women away.
The guidelines state, “Judgments and stereotypes about how pregnant individuals should behave, their physical capabilities and what is or is not healthy for a fetus are pervasive in our society and cannot be used as pretext for unlawful discriminatory decisions.”
These guidelines may seem unusual, however, they did not come unprovoked. There is a pending case involving a woman who was denied the right to enter a local nightclub because of her pregnancy.
Commission officials argue that health decisions should be made by the mother and not the bartenders. Up until recently, the Commission’s main focus has been pregnant women in the workplace.