Lawyer: Pregnant Women Should Stay Indoors

You know what I hate? When pregnant women gallivant out in public. Ugh, just keep your Buddha belly and human parasite indoors. Seriously. We don't want to see it.

That's the stance of Turkish lawyer and Sufi thinker Ömer Tuğrul İnançer. According to Hurriyet Daily News, İnançer told state television station TRT 1 that it was immoral for pregnant women with huge bellies to reveal themselves in public:

“Announcing pregnancy with a flourish of trumpets is against our civility. [They] should not wander on the streets with such bellies. First of all, it is not aesthetic,” İnançer said. “After seven or eight months of pregnancy, future mothers go out their husbands by car to get some fresh air. And they go out in the evening hours. But now, they are all on television. It’s disgraceful. It is not realism, it is immorality.”

You hear that, ladies? You should just bunker down in your homes during your third trimester so as not to affront innocent citizens with your life-carrying womb. If you must venture outdoors, you should be chauffeured by your husband and leave at sundown. Anything less would only be indecent.

İnançer defended his remarks today, insisting that the appearance of pregnant women was not aesthetic.

“You get married and get pregnant. Okay, you did well. [However], this can not be singled out as the reason you are swinging your belly. The image is not aesthetic. I am still saying the same thing. Why don’t you understand?” These are venerable things. And venerable things are kept in a respectful way,” he said.

Although İnançer's conservative views on marriage and pregnancy may be more so a reflection of his Islamic beliefs than inherently sexist notions, his strict views on how pregnant women should conduct themselves is still troubling. If pregnancy is something honorable, then why should it be concealed? Why is he shaming pregnant women into hiding? İnançer's defenses are weak, to say the least.

First, İnançer says that public pregnancy is “why young girls are scared of giving birth". I hardly think that public pregnancy functions as a means of fear-mongering. If anything, the thought that I would be constrained to the confines of my house would be a deterrent.

İnançer also said companies gave maternity leave not so that women could “wander” the streets, but to stay in their homes. Hmm. I wasn't aware that companies were allowed to dictate what women are allowed to do on their off-time. Please.

İnançer's inflammatory remarks read more like the misogynist views of a man trying to shame women about a natural process. Sorry that you can't appreciate the beauty of growing life.