When Rhode Island became the most recent (and third) state to adopt a paid family leave policy in July of 2013, the passage of the law was accompanied by predictable grumbling by GOP state lawmakers. State legislator Joseph Trillo said the law was “wide open for abuse.” “I’m very concerned about what will happen," GOP lawmaker Doreen Costa said. Patricia Morgan, another GOP representative, complained, “in a year when we're trying to improve business, this is not helping.”

Eighteen months after the law went into effect in January of 2014, some lawmakers remain as staunchly opposed to the mandate as they were when it passed. In an email, State Assembly Minority Leader Brian Newberry confirmed his opposition: “While it is true that those relatively few individuals who use the program will benefit from it, it is equally true that most people paying that payroll tax into the system will never use the program and will never see any return for their money.” He added, “Not only is there no benefit to them, there is an actual loss, both in terms of out-of-pocket taxation as well as in having to cover at work for any fellow employee who uses the benefit.”

In other instances, however, opposition has faded, or even reversed. Businesses, for instance—which might have expressed concern over how they would accommodate workers who leave, especially if they have to hire temporary employees to replace them—told reporters it’s been a “nonissue.”

This may be a function of the way the sponsor, state Senator Gayle Goldin, structured the law—so that employees, not employers, carry the economic burden through their payroll taxes. Rhode Island’s program, called Temporary Caregiver Insurance, builds on the state’s 1940s-era Temporary Disability Insurance, which guaranteed some part of a worker’s salary when the worker takes time off to recover from an illness or injury. The Temporary Caregiver Insurance allows workers to take up to four weeks of paid leave a year to care for a newborn, an adopted child, or a seriously ill partner, parent, or grandparent. Workers pay for it through payroll taxes; the program costs a worker who makes $43,000 83 cents each month. The benefit covers 60 percent of an employee’s paycheck, with a cap of $770 per week. So far, about 5,000 Rhode Islanders have taken advantage of the program, according to the Associated Press.

But at least one GOP lawmaker has had a genuine change of heart that has less to do with calculation of businesses' bottom line, and more to do with the harsh realities facing new mothers and other caretakers who are forced to make difficult decisions regarding the care of their loved ones.