Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Drink up

It's ridiculous that we would even be worrying about this in the 21st Century, but the state legislature passed a law today that protects breastfeeding mothers from being arrested for indecent exposure. The governor is expected to sign it. Theoretically, up to now, women could be forced to register as sex offenders for feeding their children (if arrested and found guilty).

American society is still prudish in many ways, with language or nudity controlled to various degrees on TV, radio and at the cinema. We should have long ago shaken off our silly mores.

Also, breast milk is what babies are supposed to be nourished on, though unfortunately the market economy has created products that even take the place of that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I try to be very modest when I have to breast-feed in public. I certainly don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but the thought that I could have had the charges described brought up against me is a little crazy. Certainly much of the PDA we see on a regular basis is more inappropriate...

Of course breast-feeding is still relatively rare so it probably does seem unusual to a lot of people--the most natural thing in the world!