A B.C. mother of two adopted children says she'll take her fight for full maternity leave benefits to the Supreme Court after a Federal Court of Appeal denied her claim Canada's employment insurance rules discriminate against adoptive parents.

The court ruled last week Patti Tomasson qualified for 35 weeks of parental leave but not for the 15 weeks of benefits for pregnancy.

"In my view, in granting maternity benefits to birth mothers, Parliament rightly recognized that pregnancy and childbirth justified the granting of particular benefits by reason of the physical and psychological consequences of pregnancy," Justice Marc Nadon wrote on behalf of the Federal Court of Appeal…

It has been more than 35 years since the federal government first introduced maternity benefits and just a half dozen since the benefits under the Employment Insurance program were expanded to give birth parents access to 50 weeks of benefits (up to 55 per cent of their pay to a maximum of $413 a week). With a two-week wait for benefits to kick in, a well-timed arrival of a child meant Mom could have a year at home with the baby.

Of course, those benefits only extend to pregnant women with 600 insurable hours of employment leading up to the beginning of their leave. The rules leave many pregnant women, adoptive parents, too, without access to any such benefits.

For both biological and adoptive parents, that first year is key to forging a bond between mother and child. That bond can have positive ramifications for the child's health.

It's estimated nearly half of new mothers aren't eligible for EI benefits, let alone the abbreviated leaves afforded under existing legislation to adoptive parents like Tomasson.

With access to quality child care a continuing problem in much of Canada, the decision to return to work within just a few months of giving birth (or adopting) can be made all the more difficult because so few care centres even accept infants under a year old. Many mothers then find themselves trapped financially at both ends -- the need to work and the need to pay someone to tend to the baby….

Parliament should take up that task. A lack of action may well speak to the under-representation of women in the ranks of Ottawa's halls of power, which in itself may well be a symptom of a work world that fails to recognize or accommodate the woman balancing her family and career.