Law is clear: Mothers can breastfeed in public (The Ithaca Journal)

OK, Ithaca, once more, slowly. Section 79-e of New York State's Civil Rights Code 6403 states:

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a mother may breast feed her baby in any location, public or private, where the mother is otherwise authorized to be, irrespective of whether or not the nipple of the mother's breast is covered during or incidental to the breast feeding.”

No exceptions for other people's discomfort. Nothing about health precautions. Women have the right to breastfeed anywhere they have a legal right to stand or sit or swim or eat or teach.

Only ignorance says a mother shouldn't nurse in or near a pool. The squeamish can remind themselves that pools are chemically treated precisely because every person in them — HIV positive or negative, sick or healthy — leaks fluids. We can't stop those fluids, and the pool is safe anyway. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and OSHA agree that human milk is not a body fluid requiring special handling. Breast milk, like spit, happens. Get over it.

It is ignorance, not store policy, that sends a breastfeeding mother to the back room. Stores might as well ask her to move because she is black or female or nearsighted. New York State stores do not have — and may not have — policies against breastfeeding.



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