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The bill expands leave rights and creates a refundable tax credit to provide medical, emotional, and financial support for people who experience pregnancy loss, but it introduces new documentation requirements and administrative burdens for employers, agencies, and providers and may exclude some eligible families while increasing federal spending.
Employees who experience a pregnancy loss (private-sector and federal) gain explicit leave protections allowing job‑protected time off for recovery and care (up to 12 weeks under FMLA provisions for eligible private‑sector workers; federal employees may take paid or unpaid leave).
Individuals may take leave intermittently or on a reduced schedule when medically necessary, enabling gradual recovery and flexible appointment scheduling after an unplanned pregnancy loss.
Parents who suffer a stillbirth can claim a refundable federal tax credit equal to the Child Tax Credit for the year, providing direct financial relief — with refundability ensuring low‑income families who owe little or no income tax still receive the benefit.
Small employers and federal agencies will face additional administrative burdens to verify medical certifications and manage intermittent or reduced‑schedule leave, raising compliance costs and workload.
Requiring medical certification can impose paperwork/reimbursement burdens on health‑care providers and create privacy and administrative hurdles for employees seeking leave.
Allowing substitution of accrued paid leave means employees may have to exhaust or deplete their existing paid‑time balances to receive pay during this leave, reducing available paid leave for other needs.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Adds FMLA leave for spontaneous loss of an unborn child, extends similar federal employee leave, and creates a refundable tax credit for stillbirths.
Adds a qualified reason for family and medical leave for employees (and their spouses) who experience an unplanned, non‑purposeful loss of an unborn child, extends similar leave rights to federal civil service employees, and creates a new refundable personal tax credit for taxpayers who suffered a stillbirth in the taxable year and can show a state certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth. The leave provisions permit up to 12 workweeks of leave, allow intermittent or reduced‑schedule use when medically necessary, permit substitution of paid leave, require reasonable notice, and allow agencies/employers to require medical certification. The tax provision creates a new refundable credit equal to the dollar amount of the child tax credit for the taxable year, requires a state stillbirth certificate and certain Social Security number rules, and applies to taxable years beginning after enactment. The bill amends both the private-sector FMLA rules and federal employee leave law and adds a new Internal Revenue Code section for the credit.
Introduced September 16, 2025 by Ashley Hinson · Last progress September 16, 2025