It really bugs me that the baby because small and helpless gets no choice.  The baby would not survive if no one takes care of it and would prefer the warmth and skin stimulation that comes with the nutrition of breastfeeding, I feel certain.  The elderly suffer the same, at the mercy of someone else but because voiceless get only maintenance.  (Lawsuit in California awarded $3 million because bedsores turned into amputated limbs.)  Unfortunately, babies cannot afford retainer fees for legal representation against substandard care.
Why is it that a fetus has more right than a newborn?  We do not as a culture (American is my experience) truly seem to value life as much as individual freedom.  It seems to me that just as big people get  a choice about what they eat so should babies.  When one is poor in the USA and on public assistance, one is given only enough to purchase foods that have low nutritional value.  (Although a different problem and in my own conspiracy theory way, figure that it keeps a population available for testing of new medications just like babies who are not
breastfed get experimental food.)
To make my depressive ramblings Lactnet friendly, when women choose not to breastfeed we all lose.  Women are at greater risk of another pregnancy and greater strain on the family resources, cancer, depression, etc., babies are a lot less healthy, the community/country loses too in that they usually pick up the slack for medical assistance, foster care and other government programs through taxes and increases in their own insurance premiums.  Then there is the long term effect of people who can not relate to others without some sort of intervention
because they are still trying to get primary needs met.  Aren't we #1 for incarceration and #2 in the world for executing prisoners?
Who wins when women choose not to breastfeed?  Has human life truly been reduced to profit margin with so many being expendable for the greater good (read that as "more money")?
We can't make women breastfeed, true.  But isn't something inherently wrong when "women just don't to"?
I feel like it's a circular issue.  Needs not met breeds those who cannot meet needs because their needs were not met.
Saddened by the state of things today.
Kerri Bundy in College Station, TX



> Now, to take this a step further.... how do Lactnetters feel about the right
> of a mother to choose how to feed her baby, ie *not* to breastfeed, if that
> is her choice, as opposed to the right of the baby to be breastfed?  I see
> something of a potential conflict here, and I would like to know how others
> see the resolution of that conflict - ie who wins?  And why?
>
>

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