"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

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