You may have seen this in the news last week. The woman in question called the police saying her boyfriend beat her. According to the story the boyfriend hasn't been arrested yet and wasn't there but the police arrested the woman because she was drunk and breast feeding her 6 week old baby.
Now some female activists are coming to her defense.
"Since when is breast-feeding while drunk a crime?" said Dr. Amy Tuteur, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist in Boston who has been following the case on her Web site, the Skeptical OB.
If the 26-year-old woman had been bottle-feeding her baby, "no one would have bothered to check what was in the bottle," Tuteur said. "You can do a lot more damage by mixing formula wrong."
If the 26-year-old woman had been bottle-feeding her baby, "no one would have bothered to check what was in the bottle," Tuteur said. "You can do a lot more damage by mixing formula wrong."
Now correct me if I am wrong as it has been a few years since my college psych class but doesn't alcohol pass through the body of the imbiber? As I understood it it basically goes everywhere as it is lighter than water and the only organ that traps it is the liver. So wouldn't this alcohol be flowing into the baby fromt he mother?
We won't go into the parenting while drunk issue here, but should'nt the father have some say in what is consumed and passed on to his child as well?
Unless I am wrong about how alcohol travels through the body I cannot see how anyone could defend drinking and breast feeding but I am sure the female activists will twist it around to defend it and more than likely get money for it too.
Classy indeed and I accept your claim that alcohol does pass into the child through breast milk, but there are two obvious defenses.
ReplyDelete1. It isn't illegal. We absolutely do not want a law that regulates the content of breast milk. It is a mark of tyranny to prosecute people for things that are not against the law. This is worse than having a drunk infant.
2. Any law that attempts to regulate the dietary intake of nursing mothers would also be overly intrusive and arbitrarily enforced. Bad law.
While most women limit their alcohol intake while pregnant and nursing, many do not. I personally do not want the government prescribing the limit for everyone.
I see where you are coming from professor, but with alcohol and the pass through effect isn't that in a sense giving alcohol to a minor?
ReplyDeleteI mean anything else that can be eaten or drank would be purified or changed by the womans body, but not the alcohol.
Throughout all of human history, no government has tried to legislate the mineral content of human breast milk. Do you want us to be the first? If alcohol can pass through, there are likely other things that do also (drugs, antibodies, sugar content). The only way to enforce such a law would be testing breast milk on demand against a list of unauthorized substances and thresholds.
ReplyDeleteI have heard from some mothers that the taste of thier milk changes depending on what they eat. we know this to certainly be true of cows milk when the feed changes. That is evidence that there is a lot of pass-through effect that is more than just alcohol.
In any case, the mother in this instance did not give her child alcohol. She gave him breast milk, from her own breast, as her own body made it, given the unregulated total body chemistry she had at the time.
She broke no law. I would be very much against any government trying to create a law over a woman's body chemistry. It just goes too far.
I am against the government doing anything outside of the confines of the constitution so I actually agree with you. But playing devils advocate I can also see the government labeling this instance especially with the pass through of alcohol along the same lines as smoking and god only knows what else.
ReplyDeleteNow think what can and will happen once the new health care legislation is passed.
My real point here is to show that feminists have pointed their finger for decades about how men force their views and ideals on women, yet it is ok for women to force their views or wants on children. This is an examble of alcohol being forced on a child and is no different than me smoking in the same room as an infant. Something I never did and is illegal in some areas.
... it is ok for women to force their views or wants on children
ReplyDeleteThat is the job description of being a mother. You think kids actually like Brussels sprouts? In fact, all parents do this all the time. It is only when someone disagrees with the outcome that we object.
Basic questions: Does a parent have the right to feed their child food? Does the government (or community) have any say in what constitutes "food"? If you answer yes to both of those, then your argument is really about where to draw the line. That will by definition be an arbitrary and capricious use of state authority against a parent.
If was once a common practice to give children alcohol to help them with teething pains or otherwise help them sleep. In some communities it still is. How much is too much? Should mothers be forbidden from taking Tylenol because that might pass through? Or perhaps, just put everyone on factory formula, "for the children".
I think you can see where I am going with this.
Oh I see and I don't dis-agree with you. I just find this whole story contradictory in so many ways.
ReplyDeleteYou might say it is "motherhood" but I say its also "fatherhood" and the feminists have used being drunk or even just drinking while taking care of children by fathers as a sign of abuse in the past. I say by their standards it has to be abuse not by my standards neccessarily.
Although I will admit no woman I would have a child with would be breast feeding while drinking if (and thats a big IF) I had anything to say about it.
My mother in law advised my wife to have a beer (German beer) while breast feeding. she claimed it was loaded with the nutrients that babies need. You going to argue with Mother in law about breast feeding? Not me.
ReplyDeleteLOL Ok I see your point there :)
ReplyDeleteI guess I also couldn't say no to a bit o' guiness either :)