On another message board I frequent, someone has posted a thread about how they wouldn't give up their seat on the tube for a heavily pregnant woman because she "chose" her disability and is therefore somehow less deserving of consideration.
I'm going to link this thread to the other and let this person see for themselves how pregnant women feel about such (IMO) nasty attitudes. Lets try to keep it civil, eh? I think this person needs to know about how disabling late pregnancy is, not just how unacceptable an attitude this is.
Below is the full text of the initial post.
"Just received this in email entitled “a heartwarming tale” and provoked a wee discussion in the office about tube etiquette.
sadly not ours, but a fine example is set for us all to follow.
"My friend Connie, who continued working in a Manhattan summer right up to the birth of her first childwas standing on the subway from Brooklyn and began to feel faint. She asked a respectable looking young man if she could possibly have his seat. He ignored her. She asked again. He rustled his Wall Street Journal, crossly.
Finally a boy, aged about 10, marched up the man and announced: "You heard the lady. She's pregnant. She needs to siddown. Now move!"
Even then he sat still, whereupon the boy began to kick his shins. "I said move, mother**er!" he remarked, and the man finally stumbled off down the carriage noisily threatening to sue. Connie says it was a very satisfying moment.
How did "Connie" knowing the man wasn't deaf or was injured in some way that required him to sit. Does the fact that she chose to work “right up to the birth” mean she’s entitled to harangue all and sundry for a seat?
AFAIC, you choose pregnancy and can't expect everyone to dance around you like handmaidens facilitating your life choice. Fair enough, I’ve given my seat up in the past, but sometimes I just don’t want to and evidently other people don’t too – is this why she was asking? And if she had to ask presumably it had happened before. If the little darling is so important why go on the tube at all.
I’m disinclined to stand up for pregnant women since in the words of Jimmy Carr, I’d prefer to see a pregnant woman standing than a fat woman in tears.
Do you always give up your seat? Always offer? Who to? Old people, pregnant people, disabled people?"