Women hold 'nurse-in' for U.S. breast-feeding bill

[ciroccoj]

Huh. Interesting.


Thu May 5, 4:18 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dozens of mothers and babies held a pre-Mother's Day "nurse-in" near the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to support legislation to make it easier for working women to breast-feed or pump milk for their babies on the job.
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"Breast-feeding is natural and it has a health benefit to mothers and children," said the legislation's chief sponsor, New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney (news, bio, voting record), trying to be heard above the din of young children.

Her bill would expand the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act so a woman could not be fired or discriminated against in the workplace for pumping or nursing on breaks.

The legislation would also have the Food and Drug Administration set standards for breast pumps and give companies a tax credit if they help women nurse or pump milk at work.

Half of mothers with children under age 1 work outside the home, she said.

Maloney failed to get the bill passed in the previous Congress but in recent years she has succeeded in getting two other bills passed, one making it clear women can nurse babies without harassment on federal property including museums and national parks and the other encouraging breast-feeding under a federal nutrition program for the poor.

Her co-sponsor, Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays, said he got accustomed to seeing women nurse babies while he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the South Pacific, but recognized some American men were uncomfortable with public breast-feeding.

"Get a life," he advised them, as the nursing moms cheered.


Link to story:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1896&ncid=1896&e=6&u=/nm/20050505/us_nm/congress_breastfeeding_dc

Comments

[snarkhunter.livejournal.com]

Um...well.

Women suffer discrimination for breast-feeding on breaks?

I'm so confused by this place sometimes.

[officerjudy.livejournal.com]

That's wonderful, but why are these companies being given tax breaks? As a student nurse, I understand the benefits of breastfeeding - but this is one of those things that's bound to piss off us childfree folk. Where are OUR perks?

[tudorlady.livejournal.com]

We don't get any, didn't you know?

You know, as long as they don't do it on the clock, make us look at it, or expect a pat on the head for being so 'enlightened', I don't care WHAT they do on their breaks.

From the article above: trying to be heard above the din of young children

Which just about sums it up. ::snerk::

[officerjudy.livejournal.com]

::offers you a CN plushie::

[woffproff.livejournal.com]

All I know is that I want someone to go shoot whoever made a horrible PSA for breastfeeding here in the USA. It plays on the radio, and it's basically a country-music jingle with lines like 'mama could chop wood and lactate like nobody's business' and ends with the charge 'Ya'll breastfeed, you hear!'

I don't object to a PSA citing the health benefits of nursing, but good grief, what woman wants to be compared to a COW in a cheesy song? (which is pretty much what the song does) I will never have kids, and but I still hate the image it projects of women. Let's remind men to treat all of us like bovines, yeah, that's a step in the right direction.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

::boggles::

I'm trying to imagine it. Failing quite miserably.

I could go into a whole long thing about the mind/body dichotomy and its significance in Western civilisation especially vis-a-vis Western relations with other cultures and with the environment and about the co-option of 'liberated' women into the glorification of the mind and the denigration of the body and blah blah blah Cir!pretensioncakes, but instead I'll just boggle in awe over the "Y'all breastfeed, you hear!"

PSAs. I believe them to be mostly the work of media-savvy aliens running bizarre experiments on us. Nothing else explains the heights of cheese they can achieve.

That, or I may have watched one too many X-Files.