It seems an insult to nature and to the Creator to imagine that pregnancy was ever intended to be a sickness.

Duffey’s remark pushes back against a medical and social tendency—common in the nineteenth century—to treat pregnancy as a pathological condition requiring excessive invalidism and restriction. By calling that view an “insult to nature and to the Creator,” she frames pregnancy as a normal, purposeful physiological state rather than a disease. The line also implies a critique of cultural practices that make pregnancy harder than it needs to be (through fear, over-medicalization, or enforced frailty), suggesting that healthful habits and respect for women’s bodily strength are more appropriate than treating expectant mothers as inherently ill. Its significance lies in asserting maternal health as compatible with vigor and dignity, not weakness.