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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