Pam MazzellaDiBosco makes a very persuasive argument for professional
organizations to go on endorsing maternal infant feeding choice when she says,
"The thing is, breastfeeding is a choice. Women can choose how to
use their bodies. Yes, we want them to choose to let their babies
breastfeed. Babies breastfeed, women allow it. And women can choose
not to allow it. .... I am not sure we really want to go to the place
where women do not have rights over their own bodies. We can't have
it both ways...rights over our reproduction and our bodies....and
forced to breastfeed against our will. Pick one. Pick the rights of
the baby over the rights of the mother...."
This is always such a sensitive topic. The best solution I've seen
is the one briefly described by Elisabeth Helsing in her paper,
Baby's Right, Mother's Duty. She says, "The Nordic school of
feminism ... moved the question of "choice" away from breastfeeding,
and closer to conception, by insisting that at issue was not the mode
of feeding the baby, but a more basic one: women's choice whether or
not to become mothers."
In other words I take this to mean that when a mother decides to
(use her body to) become a mother, then she assumes all the
responsibilities of being a mother, of which breastfeeding is only
one. One aspect of her obligation to her baby is to do her best to
ensure that his right to the highest attainable standard of health is
realized - usually only achievable by breastfeeding. Since well over
99.9% of mothers lactate, whether or not they consciously choose to,
then ultimately breastfeeding is attainable by almost all mothers and
babies. For those mothers who simply don't, then of course,
breastfeeding will not be attainable for them, but they are very rare.
The flip side to this is that mothers don't breastfeed in a
vacuum. All sectors of society (including hopefully the AAP and all
the other professional organizations, and employers and fathers and
all of us) have the duty to help mothers succeed. The mother has an
absolute right to our individual and collective help. If the rights
debate could be framed as being all about the baby since he is, after
all, the most vulnerable, needy member of society, and the end-user
of the feeding method, then it becomes clearer that babies _need_
baby-friendly hospitals, they _need_ adequate maternity leave, and
they _need_ to be able to breastfeed anywhere without their mothers
being harrassed, and so on - because without their rights being
fulfilled they are not _able_ to breastfeed. In addition, if we
placed the baby at the centre of the debate, then the status of
motherhood would be elevated, since only mothers who breastfeed are
physically capable of fulfilling all of the baby's nutritional,
emotional and immunogical needs. So babies' needs speak to mothers' rights.
The dark side to this perennial debate is that - currently - by
framing breastfeeding as an either-or choice for mothers instead of
as a firm health requirement for babies (a matter of public health)
then there is no requirement for hospitals, healthcare providers,
employers, policy-makers, or legislators to protect, promote and
support the baby's right to be breastfed, nor their mothers'
right/duty to breastfeed them. And so the status quo in a largely
formula-feeding society is maintained .....
Pamela Morrison IBCLC
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