Breastfeeding and lawsuit

  http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2007/dec/31/30dining-chain-faces-moms-suit-alleging-bias/

 ST. LUCIE WEST — Dee Dee Olsen was visiting a Ruby Tuesday restaurant when her infant daughter became hungry and she started to breastfeed her in a restaurant booth.

That incident is now at the heart of a federal lawsuit against the casual dining chain after, the woman says, a manager told her she had to either feed the girl in a restroom or leave. Olsen and the other people with her paid their bill and left, but she is now taking the restaurant to court, alleging the encounter caused severe emotional distress.

 Four years after the fact.  Which kind of gives me a problem, despite the fact that Florida has very liberal laws protecting breast-feeding:

Florida law allows a mother to breastfeed in any public or private location, even if a nipple is exposed during the process, according to state statutes. Breastfeeding is "an important and basic act of nurture which must be encouraged in the interests of maternal and child health and family values," the law states.

 I just do not understand WHY people continue to have problems with women using their breasts for their intended purpose.  They are not trains.

 Not currently nursing, but there are some things I am not willing to do.  One of them is nurse in a bathroom unless there are provisions made for comfort and cleanliness.  One restaurant we like at home has one of the chaise longues, which is very nice.  Doesn't have a diaper changing area, however.  Or some of the malls are coming up with nice areas for nursing mothers (Tucson comes to mind).

I wouldn't ask anyone else to eat in a bathroom stall.  My baby doesn't either.

 Also, the covering thing.  Some babies don't like blankets, and they just draw more atttention to OMG!Breast Exposure.  

 Not to mention that so many women are made to feel uptight about nursing in public that they either don't or feel veyr self-conscious while doing so.  

 Lastly, as for the "why doesn't she use a bottle" people (expressed milk in bottle), I can't speak for anyone else but the MV refused to take a bottle from me while I was nursing her.  She KNEW where the good stuff was, and where it came from.

 Still, four years to decide to sue does present some problems in carrying out the suit.

 DV

Candidate Mathcing Quiz

90% John Edwards
89% Barack Obama
88% Hillary Clinton
88% Chris Dodd
80% Joe Biden
77% Bill Richardson
75% Mike Gravel
74% Dennis Kucinich
51% Rudy Giuliani
38% John McCain
33% Tom Tancredo
30% Mitt Romney
29% Mike Huckabee
20% Fred Thompson
13% Ron Paul

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Grabbed from the fabulous tepintzin.

Not too too surprised. Although the gun control question could have given you a little more room to decide your stance.

I'd rather support Obama over Edwards, partly due to the Edwards campaign's action on the bloggers controversy - it seemed a little spineless, but more than that, it seemed like no one in the campaign read any of their writing and saw the need to plan a response.

Hillary - as much as I want to see them introduce Madam President, as much as I want my daughter to see a woman president, I am not sure she's the right candidate.

I have a longer post on that, but I really need to pull it together.

DV