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Breastfeeding and the Law
For the first three months of my son’s life, I nursed every two hours, round the clock. Sleep deprived and focused on establishing good nursing, I stayed close to home and on the couch. At around 4 months, I was going crazy and needed to rejoin the living world and so embarked on “adventures in breastfeeding”. Nursing in public was a gradual process for us. I hated using a nursing cover because it always got in the way and made me overheat and while I wanted to feed my baby in public, I was nervous about the public’s reaction. We started off nursing in the grocery store parking lot, moved onto the dressing rooms at Target, and graduated on a park bench at the LA zoo. Except for the occassional look of discomfort on my father-in-law’s face, I felt comfortable and happy to know that I could respond to my hungry baby in places other than the well worn spot on the sofa. One sunny Seattle afternoon, my parents’ group strolled to a local pub in lower Queen Anne. A couple of us were nursing and chatting away when two of Seattle’s finest walked in for lunch. We looked at each other and whispered, “Is it against the law to breastfeed in public?” Good question and something I hadn’t thought about.
The idea of breastfeeding in public being against the law seemed archaic if not impossible. After investigating, however, I found that up until 1993, breastfeeding in public was categorized as lude conduct and/or indecent exposure! Below is an exerpt from breastfeeding.org about the development of the laws related to breastfeeding.
This legislation removed breastfeeding from the criminal statutes and created a new
law that stated that breastfeeding was an important and basic act of nature that
needed to be encouraged in the interests of maternal and child health. The law
provided that a woman had a right to breastfeed in any place where she had a right
to be. This legislation served as a model for legislation subsequently enacted by
other states.”
Idaho is still getting their act together but currently, public nursing is not permitted.
[...] while ago, I posted about breastfeeding and the law. While N.I.P. is protected by the law, there are many nursing moms who encounter looks of disgust, [...]
August 9th, 2008 at 11:57 am