In every other country, pregnant women are goddesses...

...or so the author of a letter to Svenska Dagbladet's letters to the editor page wrote a few days ago. This woman, whose name I have sadly forgotten, complained bitterly at the injustices she suffers in Swedish society as a pregnant woman and made it sound as though pregnant women in Sweden are somehow mistreated and maligned. I read the letter three times, trying to figure out if this woman was serious or just being ironic. I am still not sure. I sincerely hope she was being ironic, else she surely has a lot to learn about the rest of the world and how good she has it in Sweden.

All I know is that when I read the article I found myself wanting to shake this woman by her shoulders and scream, a la Cher in Moonstruck sans the slap, "Snap out of it!"

Her main complaints seemed to focus on her feeling that people do not treat pregnant women like they are special enough. According to her, no one in Sweden ever offers their subway or bus seat to pregnant women (definitely not true--I have witnessed on countless occasions men and women offering their seats to pregnant women), that people in Sweden only view children as noisy and annoying (some are, but then again, so are loads of adults), that people behave as though pregnant women brought their pregnancies upon themselves and so have no right to complain.... Well, technically, they and their partner decided to have a baby so--in a way--they did bring it upon themselves but why should that stop them from complaining?

But what made me chuckle was her statement that everywhere else in the world pregnant women are treated like goddesses. Hmm... I don't know many other countries as generous as Sweden when it comes to maternity leave + maternity leave benefits, prenatal and postnatal care--there are even special movie showings called "Baby Bio" so mothers on maternity leave can still see a movie and not have to leave their babies with a childminder.

Sweden is not perfect but it is a country that is far from treating its pregnant citizens like dirt. I am suddenly reminded of an article I read in Vanity Fair around five or six years ago. The article dealt with the civil war in Sierra Leone and featured a macabre pictorial of the consequences of this war. One of the pictures was a pregnant woman who'd been raped and mutilated, her body left by the roadside. The caption for the picture informed the reader that the woman's baby had been cut from her body and kicked around like a football by soldiers stoned out of their minds. Here was a pregnant woman whose life should have been valued and cherished--she was carrying the future in her womb. She should have been treated like a goddess instead of having to run for her life, only to lose it at the hands of men so stoned they probably didn't remember killing her later.

So before anyone, pregnant or not, complains about not being treated like a goddess, they can think about that dead woman by the roadside and count themselves lucky they aren't a casualty of war.