Mother Fights Veto of Bill on Fetal Injuries : Legislation: Her fetus was irreparably damaged. Wilson rejected a law that would have held employers responsible.

In an emotional appeal, a woman whose fetus was irreparably damaged after a company nurse delayed medical treatment pleaded Tuesday for Gov. Pete Wilson to reverse his veto of legislation that would have made employers liable for prenatal injuries in the workplace.

Linda Bell Freytes, whose son died when he was 2 years old of brain injuries stemming from the lack of treatment, wept as she told a Capitol news conference of her anguish over both the boy’s death and a court’s decision that her employer could not be held responsible for the nurse’s inaction because the injured fetus was not an employee.

“The governor should read that bill again,” Freytes said. “Maybe he should read about my case. Maybe he should come see me and I’ll show him a picture of my son and he’ll know what hell is like.”

In an unusual move designed to quell criticism of the veto, a spokesman for the governor waited outside the news conference to brief reporters on Wilson’s position and his stated eagerness to find a compromise.

The governor appeared to be backing away from a proposal that would give employers the right to bar pregnant women from any job that might be hazardous to a fetus. “I don’t think he has any preconceived ideas right now,” said Wilson spokesman James Lee. “I think we’re going to go in fresh.”

Labor organizations and women’s rights groups have assailed Wilson’s suggestion, saying it would amount to legalized sex discrimination. Labor attorneys said the proposal appears to contradict a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in March in which the justices ruled that employers could not bar fertile women from jobs that put a developing fetus at risk.

But even if Wilson’s proposal had been law, it would not have helped Freytes, because she did not work in an unsafe job. She was a clerk at a Macy’s department store in San Francisco.

In September, 1981, Freytes, then seven months pregnant, was at work when she felt a sharp pain in her abdomen. A company nurse told her she was having gas pains and suggested that she lie down for a while, Freytes said.

Later, Freytes’ husband arrived and summoned an ambulance, which reached her nearly two hours after she had first complained of the pain. Her uterus had ruptured. She said doctors told her she almost certainly would have died had she gone any longer without medical care.

The courts rejected a lawsuit filed against Macy’s on behalf of the boy because the workers’ compensation system is the only recourse in California for injuries that happen on the job. The boy could not be compensated under that system for workplace injuries because he was not an employee.

“The law failed me,” Freytes said. “It failed me terribly. It failed my son. If a law is wrong it should be changed. Babies shouldn’t have to suffer.”

The bill, by Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson), would have permitted lawsuits outside the workers’ compensation system in cases in which a fetus was injured by the intentional or negligent action of a pregnant woman’s employer. It passed with the support of the California Nurses Assn., the California Teachers Assn. and other elements of organized labor. The California Manufacturers’ Assn. strongly opposed the bill.

Wilson vetoed the measure Oct. 13, saying he did not believe any workplace injury, even to a fetus, should be settled outside the workers’ compensation system. He did not recommend including prenatal injuries under workers’ compensation, a change that business groups have resisted.

The Republican governor angered feminists and labor groups when he added that a fair way of resolving the issue would be to allow companies to refuse employment to pregnant women if they could show that a hazard existed and that the safety of the fetus could not be assured with “practicable and economically feasible means.”

Wilson spokesman Lee said Wilson agrees that women such as Freytes should have a legal remedy available. “The question is what kind of remedy,” Lee said.