Bill Protects Nursing Moms From Harassment

Consider the confusing public life of breasts.

Plumped up and put on display by foam padding or implants, they are widely admired and used to sell beer.

But put in service to feed a baby, they are alarming and subject to furrowed brows and legislation.

Despite years of lawsuits, nurse-ins, and new committees to promote breast-feeding, many new mothers continue to face objections when they breast-feed their babies in stores, malls or restaurants.

Kimber Holmes, 27, said she was shopping in Tower Records in Sacramento when she noticed that her 7-month-old daughter Elora was hungry.

“They make that ‘eh eh eh’ sound, or you see them put their little fists toward their mouth or they do what’s called rooting , turn toward your chest.”

So, she sat down in the blank-tape section and nursed the baby until Elora fell asleep. This happened last winter and she said she was “bundled up and discreet.”

Soon, a clerk told her she could not nurse the baby in the store. Apparently, two men in their 20s had complained to the manager. Upset and confused about why those customers had priority, Holmes left.

Similarly, Kathy Cole, 28, a hairdresser from Orange, was in traffic school with her 2-month-old son, Joshua, last month when a supervisor asked her to leave because she brought her baby. “I told her, ‘I’m a nursing mom.’ She said, ‘We just can’t have this.’ ” A uniformed marshal escorted the mother and son from class.

“I was totally humiliated. I’m not a criminal,” she said.

Her husband, Mike, was upset, too. “She came home bawling. When someone makes my wife cry I don’t like that. I love my wife. I think the way they treated her, it was despicable.”

He doesn’t see what the problem is. Neither do activists of breast-feeding who have run into unexpectedly heated and partisan opposition to a nursing-rights bill that aims to protect nursing mothers from harassment.

The bill, voted down last month in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, is scheduled for another vote Monday. Opponents argue the bill is unnecessary since public breast-feeding is already legal, or that it might lead to public nudity, or that public breast-feeding just isn’t “appropriate, or that it might pressure mothers to feel that they have to breast-feed in public.”

Rep. Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), who is carrying the bill, said, “When you hear some of the comments, you wonder if I was advocating public nudity (in front of) children.” In fact, he said, support legislation is needed because of the number of documented incidents of harassment and intimidation collected nationwide. The most common complaint involves women being thrown out of restaurants. But he said there have also been cases of a nursing woman asked to leave a doctor’s office and another, a parenting class.

Identical laws sailed through six other state legislatures, said Berkeley nutritionist Kristen Marsh, who initiated the California bill. Studies show that children who are breast-fed have lower mortality rates from many childhood illnesses and conditions, including meningitis and childhood cancers. It also helps protect nursing mothers from breast and ovarian cancer.

After impressing on women the importance of breast-feeding, Marsh said, “We send them out to the cruel world where all our efforts are undermined by someone who says, ‘You’re gross.’ ”

She suspects the fundamental problem revolves around a new kind of “N-word.” “In my view, they’re so preoccupied with this nipple thing.”

The proposed bill gives women the right to breast-feed in any location, public or private, “irrespective of whether or not the nipple of the mother’s breast is uncovered during or incidental to the breast-feeding.”

Said Marsh, “It makes their skin crawl for some reason.

“The bottom line is, we are mammals and breasts were made for making milk. People forget that.”

The mothers said they have quickly learned to separate sexuality from food service and wish others could do the same. According to Teresa Stark, an aide to Villaraigosa, “If you’re offended by breast-feeding,” she said, “you’re looking too close.”