Norma writes:
"However, it was up to them to make a conscious decision to
give their babies inferior nourishment. Nobody forced them to nurse,
but at least they were making informed choices."
Exactly!!! We do not assume the biological norm when we ask the mother
her plans. I once worked with a teen mom who told me she was
breastfeeding b/c a nurse in the DR said to her something like "Let's
put the baby to breast now" and she just did. She had never planned to
bf, but once she nursed the baby, she was hooked. She assumed the nurse
just made a mistake--who knows--maybe she just had a hunch?
In my mind, coercion is an attempt to draw people away from what they
intutively know is true. The biological norm is innately correct and we
should always act with respect for its imperative. When we offer breast
and bottle up as "options", we clearly equalize them and I think that
is how we lose our internal compass. Women know what to do when they
are not messed with. If someone's own true desire is to act against her
own biology, then she will act accordingly and not be forced or coerced
otherwise.
So, as I see it, no one is being forced to breasfeed or have a normal
birth just because it is assumed that every mother and baby deserves
to, but an awful lot of women are being coerced into the opposites.
When I worked in hospital, my peer counselor staff and I had a way of
venting our observations re: coercion--"Here, inforrmed decision-making
means we will inform you of what we want you to know and you will make
the decision we want you to make". The idea was always to screen and
edit information. I was once screamed at for asking a nurse for a
package insert for a mom who had been offered depo and not been
provided with the info (actually, our clinic clients repeatedly told us
that they were told they could not go home unless they submitted to
"the shot"). The nurse freely gave the info to me, but the OB was
furious, b/c, as he said "It is not the decision of the woman which
form of birth control she uses; it is the decision of her doctor".
There is a world of difference between acting on behalf of normal human
physiology and direspecting choice. I think what we do as a culture is
respect the IDEA of choice so much that we apply it inappropriately all
over the place where no free will is really being exercised at all.
Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA
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