In today’s Herald Tribune, a profile of Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, depicts her as one tough lady. This isn’t news. But what is news to me is the fact that she kept her most recent pregnancy quiet for eight months from family, friends and colleagues. She managed to do this by hiding her bump with flowing scarves and baggy blouses. So determined was she not to let on to anyone that she was pregnant that she even delivered an important speech in Texas, a month before her delivery date, as she leaked amniotic fluid.

Is our society so caught up in showing that a woman can be as stoic and ambitious as a man even if her health is at risk?

I’m not of the mindset that pregnancy is an illness or that women should not work during their pregnancy. On the contrary, I believe that working throughout one’s pregnancy can greatly help in distracting from pre-natal jitters and in continuing to do the job that defines a woman before she takes on that of a parent. But there’s something that profoundly saddens me about the fact that Palin felt she had to hide such an integral part of her body and her future in order to maintain her current career.

I know women who have lost their jobs or, mysteriously, not had their contracts renewed once their employer learned of their pregnancy. But those, I like to think, are rare cases. In today’s working world, in America and in Europe, there are solutions to a woman working both during and after her pregnancy, and solid companies, often with women at the helm, work with such situations. As Palin herself has said, “To any critics who say a woman can’t think and work and carry a baby at the same time, I’d just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave.”

Palin’s child was born with down’s syndrome and his condition was revealed to her in an amniocentesis. Her decision not to reveal her pregnancy, however, was not because she was reluctant to disclose her child’s condition. Instead, she feared public scrutiny. “I didn’t want Alaskans to fear I would not be able to fulfill my duties,” she said in People magazine.

For eight months, she hid her son. Now, he’s made more public appearances than most celebrity children before the age of two. It sickens me to see that the very child she hid from the public is now one of the centerpieces of defining who she is as a candidate.