Breast-feeding moms seek human rights protection

AUGUSTA – Hell hath no fury like a breast-feeding mother scorned, the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee learned Wednesday.

At the beginning of a five-hour session on proposed changes to the state’s human rights law, the committee was visited by more than a dozen mothers and their breast-fed babies.

“Every baby deserves the best,” one mother said at the beginning of an hourlong seminar on the health benefits of mother’s milk. The committee also considered bills to revamp the state’s human rights law.

The mothers, including Laura Kenefic of Orono, said they have been discriminated against when they tried to breast-feed their children in public.

Kenefic said she was asked to leave a business retreat when she tried to breast-feed her child, who is allergic to commercial formula. “It is absolutely critical that Maine [enact] this law to protect a mother’s right to breast-feed and the breast-fed child’s right to eat,” she told the committee in support of LD 1396, which would ban discrimination of breast-feeding under the Human Rights Act.

Mothers testified to dirty looks they received in restaurants and requests that they feed their children in toilets, out of public view, from people who consider the process to be exhibitionistic. “If I wanted to be an exhibitionist, I would have got a job at Mark’s Show Place,” one mother said, referring to a Portland area strip club.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Deborah H. Simpson, D-Auburn, would protect a mother’s right to breast-feed and is based on a New York state law. The bill was supported by numerous mothers who testified to the health benefits of breast-feeding. Sen. Mary R. Cathcart, D-Orono, said 26 states have adopted similar laws because breast-feeding “is the most important thing you can do for a healthy child.”

Those who object to public breast-feeding find it “sexual and indecent,” said Rep. Glenn Cummings, D-Portland, the father of two breast-fed children. The process is actually “healthy, normal and appropriate,” Cummings said.

Discrimination against a nursing mother is already a violation of the Human Rights Act but the bill would “further clarify the situation,” said Patricia Ryan, executive director of the Human Rights Commission, the agency that administers discrimination complaints.

Needless to say, no one spoke against the bill, motherhood or the nursing babies.

In other proposed changes to the Human Rights Act, Rep. Royce Perkins, R-Penobscot, wants to remove “protected classes” and Rep. G. Paul Waterhouse, R-Bridgton, wants to eliminate “government-imposed quotas.”

Perkins sponsored LD 698, which would remove all “protected classes” of race, creed, color, gender, disability, ancestry or national origin in the Human Rights Act, in favor of a general prohibition of discrimination unless there was “reasonable concern” with other complications.

The Penobscot Republican voted to support gay rights, but questioned what was next.

“Will obesity be the next protected class? It would be silly to add to the list any more. Let’s make one statement and get on with it,” he said.

The Perkins bill was opposed by Human Rights Commission Director Ryan, who said it would “change the entire focus” of the Human Rights Act, along with representatives from the Attorney General’s Office, the state Administrative and Financial Services Department and the Maine Municipal Association.

When governments give preferential treatment for sex, race, gender, ethnicity or national origin, they are practicing “racism in reverse,” Waterhouse said. Eliminating any and all preferences for employment, college admission or housing “is the only real way to end discrimination. Let’s have fairness, not favoritism,” he said, proposing LD 974 as a common-sense approach to discrimination. Preferential treatment is just “another wrong” which generates more intolerance and more racism, Waterhouse said.

The Waterhouse bill was opposed by the Human Rights Commission and the Attorney General’s Office.

A work session on the bills is scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday, April 9, in Augusta.