If we truly valued motherhood, we would actually do something to help pregnant women

We’ve all heard the platitudes: Motherhood is the most important job in the world. If mothers made a parenting salary – we’re chefs, chauffeurs, housekeepers and office managers! – we’d be bazillionaires.

Come on. We’re not even willing to let a pregnant woman hold on to a job.

On Wednesday, the US supreme court will hear arguments in a case to decide whether the Pregnancy Discrimination Act requires employers to provide accommodations for pregnant workers. The case stems from former UPS worker Peggy Young, who was put on unpaid leave after her doctor recommended she not lift packages heavier than 20 pounds.

All the Hallmark-card sentiment in the world doesn’t change the reality that whether you’re in the highest court in all the land or at the neighborhood playground, pregnant women get treated like second-class citizens and mothers are expected to “do it all” with little more than a condescending pat on the head.

Time and again – and decades after the feminist movement took on work and parenting issues – we fail every possible test of what it takes to create healthy pregnant women and supported mothers.

Pregnant women’s rights are routinely violated: women are forced into having C-sections they don’t want and sometimes arrested if they have stillborn babies; we’re coerced and sometimes forced to carry pregnancies we don’t want; but if we do want to have children, we risk losing our jobs. Sometimes we’re straight-up fired for getting knocked up.

Pregnant woman’s health in the US is abysmal compared to other countries – so much so that Amnesty International published a full report on the issue. Maternal death is on the rise here and, according to one study, the US maternal mortality rate is already more than double that in Saudi Arabia and triple the rate in the UK. Low-income and women of color are hardest hit: according to the World Health Organization, for example, black women in California have comparable maternal mortality rates to women in Syria and Kazakhstan.

Once you have a child, things don’t get much better.

Other than the United States, the only nation we know of that doesn’t have mandated paid maternity leave ... is Papua New Guinea. Check this out:

paid maternity leave us vs world

According to the organization Moms Rising, over half of American mothers have no paid leave when they have a child at all – and many of the women who make up the other half “cobble together” pay from their sick days, vacation days and disability leave. (Parents in Sweden, however, have been able to take a long paid leave since 1974.)

Want to breastfeed? Too bad – there are probably no lactation rooms at work. Want to bottle feed? You’re a selfish monster.

Child care in the US is too expensive, even while French parents have multiple government-offered options for childcare as soon as an infant is born. Mothers in the US are paid less than their child-free counterparts and trying to send their kids to a better school district could land them in jail (not if you’re white, of course).

For all of the conservative rhetoric in the US about the importance of motherhood, parenting and family values, we sure are comfortable with trailing behind global norms on nearly every standard or policy that would support mothers, parents and families.

We know what we have to do to make parenting easier and children healthier. But so long as women and men are willing to embrace platitudes about motherhood over policies to support mothers, women like Peggy Young have to rely on the men at the supreme court to rule whether their decisions to become mothers ought to cost them their jobs – or more.

• Interactive: The US is still the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave