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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