Arriving Early, Bringing Something

THERE ARE 193 NATIONS in the United Nations, and 185 of them provide paid maternity leave for women in the final days of pregnancy and the first days of motherhood. Among those that do not are several south Pacific island nations, and the land of opportunity itself, the United state of America. The island nations are somewhat justified, stinjy-istically by their lack of financial resources, but there is no justification for a country as wealthy as the United States, to be this freaking cheap, stingy, and heartless other than regressive cultural norms.Like the pioneer spirit, up by your boot strap, do it on your own rah rah go me mentality, on steroids. The United States is historically late to the table in nearly everything that really matters. It abolished slavery long after every other nation had. When William the Conqueror set foot and planted his flag on English soil in the year 1066, he made to pronouncements. All this is mine, and, henceforth any person who sets foot on English soil is free. Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1862, but endured, in the form of sharecropping, well into the twentieth first century in the U.S.. Women were given the right to vote in the first years of the twentieth century in Europe, but not until 1920 in America, and only after decades of struggle and advocacy. The facts regarding guaranteed government health care are well known. European countries have had it for decades, in America, Obamacare, which is a watered down version which does not eliminate corporate profiteering, has been in existence for only six years, is constantly under assault from reactionary forces, and is threatened with extinction. Paid maternity leave would not pass the current congress, even though Obama would sign it into law if it did. Unless democrats win an unlikely large number of congressional seats in the forthcoming election, and Hillary Clinton is elected president, the next congress is no more likely than the current one provide this vital, and seemingly fundamental protection for working mothers. Eventually tHE United States will catch up to the rest of the world, as it somehow, through protracted crusading, always seems to do. it is better to be late to the table than to never arrive at all.......PLEASE SHARE THIS WEBSITE WITH OTHERS WHO CARE ABOUT PUBLIC AFFAIRS, FOR THE ENHANCEMENT OF DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC DISCOURSE.THANKS!