Posted on Alternet.org
I'm thinking that instead of legislating what women can and cannot do with their own bodies in this country, we should propose a law that partition's women's bodies into sections much like what we seem to be doing with Iraqi land.
Therefore, we can enact one law that lords over a woman's uterus related to all things reproductive: pregnancy, abortion, childbirth. A woman' s uterus may be used to grow and house the pre-born but may not be emptied of its contents via an abortion.
We can then legislate women's breasts allowing for the bearing of boobs on billboards, in strip clubs and in television & print advertising - that is, for purposes solely related to ogling and superficial sexuality.
Public breastfeeding is OUT under those legal tenets. We all know how repulsive breastfeeding is, right?
According to Delta Airlines, breastfeeding your baby on an airplane is tantamount to public drunkenness and will get you thrown off a flight. On October 13th, as a Delta flight was preparing to take off from Burlington, Vermont, a 27 year-old mother, seated in the second to last row in a window seat, preceded to breastfeed her 22 month old child.
A flight attendant asked her to "cover up" and offered her a blanket - which the mother declined. The flight attendant, apparently up-in-arms over this blasphemy, called to a Delta ticket agent to remove the family (!) from the plane. The young mother, feeling extremely embarrassed at that moment, complied.
MSNBC quotes the mother as saying, "It embarrassed me. That was my first reaction, which is a weird reaction for doing something so good for a child."
I'd say so. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services both promote breastfeeding as a tremendous health benefit for the baby as well as, in some instances, for the mother (it has been reported that breastfeeding reduces a woman's risk of breast cancer later in life).
In fact, the CDC is committed to increasing breastfeeding rates throughout the United States. Delta Airlines needs to step up to the plate and institute a company-wide policy that directly addresses public breastfeeding as permissible as well as ensure that their employees are up to snuff with their cultural competency skills.
According to MomsRising.org, a new advocacy web site started by Joan Blades from Moveon.org and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner (author of The Motherhood Manifesto) this mother was publicly humiliated for doing what doctors, and even large government agencies advocate. They've got a petition going to Delta Airlines to encourage support of breastfeeding mothers.
They are also lobbying to get Congress to pass an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 called the Breastfeeding Promotion Act. Not sure what that is but it's worth some research...