Gov. Pat Quinn signed the “Pregnancy Fairness Bill,” which ensures workplace accommodations for expecting mothers, at the Alivio Medical Center in Pilsen on Tuesday.

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Mary Flowers (D-Chicago) and state Sen. Toi Hutchinson (D-Chicago Heights), requires Illinois businesses to provide pregnant employees with reasonable health-related accommodations. Such accommodations include more frequent bathroom and water breaks, the ability to sit down and exclusion from heavy-lifting tasks, according to Melissa Josephs, equal opportunity policy director with Women Employed.

An employer’s failure to accommodate expecting mothers’ requests, or ensure their continued employment, training and job advancement opportunities would be treated as a civil rights violation under the provisions of the bill.

“These are workers who want to keep working,” stressed Josephs, whose advocacy group helped draft the legislation. “By giving reasonable accommodations, it really benefits the worker and the employer because you’ve got a loyal worker who keeps working and you’ve got an employer who doesn’t have to … rehire and retrain somebody.”

Josephs added, “It’s really about time that something like this passed.” Women Employed says that two-thirds of American women pregnant for the first time work during their pregnancies. What’s more, women are either primary or “co-breadwinners” in 64 percent of American households, according to Women Employed’s website.

“Every woman in Illinois should have equal opportunity to provide for themselves and their families and not be discriminated against because of their gender,” the governor wrote in a Chicago Sun-Times opinion piece on Monday. “No longer will expecting moms be threatened, mistreated or forced out of their jobs.”

Ed. note: This article has been updated to accurately reflect that state Sen. Toi Hutchinson (D-Chicago Heights), not Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago), was a sponsor of the bill.