Pregnant women in Indiana would be able to ask their employers for reasonable accommodations such as additional restroom visits, keeping water at their workstations, and longer breaks, under a bill headed to the floor of the state Senate.

Senate Bill 342 would require businesses with more than 15 employees to allow workers such dispensations if they have a health care provider’s note. In order not to comply, businesses would have to show that doing so would create an undue burden.

State Health Commissioner Kris Box and Family and Social Services Secretary Jennifer Sullivan testified in favor of the bill, saying that the measure — similar to laws already in place in 27 other states — could lead to healthier babies and healthier mothers.

Indiana has the third-highest maternal mortality rate in the nation and the seventh-highest infant mortality rate.

Supporters of the bill note it could help move the needle on both measures.

“This is a common-sense bill,” author Sen. Ron Alting, R-Lafayette, said Monday at a meeting of the Senate Committee of Family and Children Services. The panel voted 7-2 to support the proposal after taking nearly three hours of testimony on it.

But some in the business community questioned whether the measure is necessary and if it would only confuse employers who want to do the right thing.

The proposal would put the onus on employers to prove that making accommodations would be an undue burden and be particularly onerous for smaller companies, said Mike Ripley, vice president of health care policy and employment law for the Indiana Chamber.

A company wanting to go down that path would have to disclose its financial situation to the Indiana Civil Rights Commission, which would be responsible for resolving disputes, said Andrew Berger, senior vice president of governmental affairs for the Indiana Manufacturers Association. The association also spoke out against the bill.

As a practicing obstetrician, Box said, she often saw patients for whom a small change at work could ensure a healthier pregnancy for both baby and mother. This could include the ability to have a small snack or a dispensation not to have to climb a ladder later in pregnancy. At the time, she’d work with an employer and patient to arrive at a solution that was satisfactory for all.

Not every woman, however, at this point feels comfortable approaching her boss to ask for dispensation, Sullivan said. In fact, she said, she experienced this herself as an emergency medicine resident during the third trimester of pregnancy, when she was assigned to a field emergency rotation.

She thought the job might prove too physically taxing but kept quiet. Then she found herself during a response to a car crash dragging a heavy cot across a field and resuscitating a patient and regretted that she had not said anything.

“If I couldn’t do that, it means that others can’t either and we have to be their voice,” she said.

A few years ago Ashley Phillips could have used just such a voice when she became pregnant with twin girls.

The Indianapolis resident grappled with nausea and migraines and her doctor advised her to eat snacks and drink more water, something she could not do in the lab, where she worked. Each time she took a break to comply with her doctor’s recommendations and left her post, her supervisor made her feel guilty.

Phillips told the senators that she felt paranoid and stressed and that she often skipped the snacks and took as few bathroom breaks as she could. Eventually she lost the pregnancy.

“I felt forced to leave my job because my basic right to care for my unborn children was violated,” she said.

Contact IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at 317-444-6354 or shari.rudavsky@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky.