Breastfeeding Not Related to Pregnancy?

Ohio Supreme Court: Breastfeeding Not Related to Pregnancy – What?

This is one subject near and dear to my heart.  Womyn should NEVER be restricted from breastfeeding their babies!

There are so many benefits to the baby, and to the mother, that are not spoken about enough – especially in this decade.  The baby gets an ironclad immune system, greater and faster brain development, healthier teeth over their lifetime, greater and close bonding with the mother, easier food digestion, more sleep and more regular sleep patterns, less fussiness in general.  The mother gets a vast lowering of her chances of later breast cancer because she actually uses her breasts for the purpose they were designed ( DUH!), a deep satisfaction that she is giving her baby the absolute best nutrition available to her, also more sleep because the baby sleeps better, some women even get faster weight loss after pregnancy – bonus!

I encourage all my pregnant clients to breastfeed.  I would not have traded my experience with it for the world – even though I had a milk duct in my right breast that had a tendency to get plugged up.  Every time, somehow my baby would get it dislodged and save me!

I breastfed for an entire year and I didn’t start feeding my baby solid food till she was 6 months old.  No one would have ever known – she was a very healthy chubbette at 6 months!

There is no more perfect food for a human infant than their mother’s own milk.  It is clear that though the Supreme Court in Ohio had it’s head up it’s – well, did not deliver a wise decision, this mother should have been vindicated and given the justice she deserves.

Lactate on your own time, lady

Friday, Aug. 28, 2009 11:29 PDT
On Thursday, the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed that Totes/Isotoner had the right to fire breastfeeding mother LaNisa Allen for taking breaks to pump milk. Yeah, you read that right. Timothy P. Reilly, attorney for Totes/Isotoner, told the Columbus Dispatch, “Totes has taken the position since the beginning of this case that it terminated the plaintiff (Allen) for a proper reason, and that’s that she took unauthorized work breaks, regardless of her sex or condition.” Because unauthorized pumping, clearly, can be divorced from one’s “sex or condition.” This would be the rare instance in which I find myself tempted to type “LOL,” except the Supreme Court used essentially the same reasoning: It was on Allen to prove that the stated cause for her dismissal (failure to follow directions) was a pretext for discrimination, and technically, she didn’t. Ergo, the court decided not to bother addressing the thornier question of whether lactation counts as a pregnancy-related condition, which would be protected under the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

In the strictest legal sense, the ruling is logical: Allen admitted she took unauthorized breaks, and that’s a firing offense. If she can’t prove that someone said, “Ha! Now’s our chance to get rid of her for being a woman!” then apparently, she can’t prove discrimination. But it’s manifestly weaselly to suggest that her “insubordination” can somehow be separated from the fact that she was lactating, especially since they were responding to a decision that included this colossal eye-roller:

Allen gave birth over five months prior to her termination from [Isotoner]. Pregnant [women] who give birth and choose not to breastfeed or pump their breasts do not continue to lactate for five months. Thus, Allen’s condition of lactating was not a condition relating to pregnancy but rather a condition related to breastfeeding. Breastfeeding discrimination does not constitute gender discrimination.

Of course not.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer and one of the court’s three women, Justice Maureen O’Connor, at least had the decency to “concur in judgment only,” meaning they agreed that Allen hadn’t technically proved discrimination but believe lactation should, in fact, be covered under the law against pregnancy discrimination. Yet the only straight-up dissenting opinion came from Justice Paul Pfeifer, who wrote, “Seriously? Are you kidding me with this?”

OK, no he didn’t. But he did say that even if you insist on separating Allen’s extra breaks from her condition as a lactating mother, then they should be regarded no differently than unscheduled pee breaks. “There is no evidence in the record about any limit on the length of unscheduled restroom breaks and no evidence that employees had to seek permission from a supervisor to take an unscheduled restroom break. There is evidence only that unscheduled bathroom breaks were allowed and that LaNisa Allen was fired for taking them. What made her breaks different?” Ding ding ding!

More importantly, Pfeifer gets to the heart of why the court’s refusal to address whether lactation counts as “a condition related to pregnancy” is so incredibly disappointing:

We accept cases not necessarily because of how the result might affect the parties in the individual case, but because of how a holding might affect other persons similarly situated. Ohio’s working mothers who endure the uncomfortable sacrifice of privacy that almost necessarily accompanies their attempt to remain on the job and nourish their children deserve to know whether Ohio’s pregnancy-discrimination laws protect them.

Yeah, they do. And furthermore, LaNisa Allen deserved not to be fired because her employer expected a lactating mother to go five hours without expressing milk. Totes/Isotoner may have the law on their side by a hair, but that doesn’t change the facts. LaNisa Allen was terminated for taking 15 minutes a day to relieve a painful and distracting condition that arose because she believed breastfeeding was best for her child and thus chose to maintain her body’s natural post-pregnancy state. Lactation is, in fact, related to pregnancy, even if some women halt it earlier than Allen did. And breastfeeding discrimination is, in fact, gender discrimination, unless I missed the news that men can breastfeed now. That anyone could argue otherwise with a straight face only highlights how absurdly reluctant some people are to acknowledge and oppose blatant sexism.

― Kate Harding

Tags: baby, breastfeeding, health, Mother, ohio, Ohio Supreme Court, women