Right on!!!!


> "I know it would require a massive paradigm shift that would rock our
> entire cultural
> expectations of women to make the USA be about the rights of the baby."
>
> The US already IS about the rights of the baby when it comes to car seats
> and prenatal drug and alcohol abuse.  A
> quote from the book Understanding Gender, Crime, and Justice by Merry
> Morash (2005):
>
> "By 2003, 35 states had criminally prosecuted women for the use of alcohol
> or other drugs during pregnancy, and additional states
> had used involuntary civil committment to protect the fetus from drugs
> being used by a pregnant woman.  It is usually poor women of
> color who are the most affected by the laws because they obtain their
> medical care from clinics, and the use the drugs that are
> considered harmful.  Well-to-do women are able to see private physicians
> who see their drug use as a medical problem rather than
> a child protection problem.  Middle- and upper-class women's drugs of
> choice, particularly alcohol, often are overlooked as threats
> to the unborn child."
>
> Women do not have a right to choose to abuse their children.  If they
> abuse their children and are
> caught, they are punished and may lose their rights to their children.
> Same thing with neglect and reckless endangerment.
> Cathy Liles and I have been presenting at conferences for years the notion
> that willingly choosing formula when you could very well
> have breastfed (which is 99% of the formula-feeding women) qualifies as
> reckless endangerment (Promoting Breastfeeding?? Promoting Guilt?? by
> Catherine Liles and Katherine Dettwyler).  Reckless endangerment:
> consciously doing something that you know is likely to harm
> your child.
>
> The choice should not be between breastfeeding and formula.  The choice
> should be between having a child and not having a child.
>
> If you don't want to take care of a baby properly (according to the
> currently available scientific understanding)
> then by all means, DON'T HAVE A BABY.  Get a plant.
>
> More and more people ARE talking about the rights of all human babies to
> be breastfed.  As a right.  As a human.
>
> See also:  http://www.promom.org/bf_info/wababf.html
>
> Kathy Dettwyler
>



Tina Kimmel, PhD, MSW (Master of Social Welfare), MPH (Master of Public
Health)
Research Scientist, California Maternal Child Health Program
Certified Lactation Educator, Mother and Grandmother
Oakland, California

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