Amy Swan wasn’t trying to expose herself. She just wanted to feed her 9-month-old daughter.

A stranger in the nursery of a Lawrence fitness club, where Swan was breast-feeding the infant in November, thought differently.

“He said, ‘Those are your parts, and I don’t want my son exposed to that,” Swan said last week.

She said such encounters are unusual in Lawrence. But the incident made her mad enough to start contacting lawmakers — and by the end of August, the Lawrence City Commission is likely to consider an ordinance guaranteeing the right of women to breast-feed in public places.

“I don’t think this is a big problem in Lawrence,” said Commissioner Boog Highberger, who has asked city staff to research the possibilities of an ordinance. “On the other hand, I don’t think it should be a problem. … I think we’re clarifying a woman’s right to give her baby the best possible nutrition.”

An ordinance won’t have universal support, however.

“My discomfort with it is whether or not this is an area where our City Commission needs to take a stand,” Commissioner Sue Hack said last week. “I think it’s a personal issue.”

Healthy babies

Breast-feeding supporters say the practice helps babies become healthier and more disease-resistant, and it strengthens the mother-child bond.

A spokesman for the National League of Cities said last week its research turned up only one city — Philadelphia — that has passed legislation to protect a mother’s right to breast-feed, though many other cities exempt breast-feeding from anti-nudity laws.

On its Web site, La Leche League International identified 34 U.S. states that have laws either protecting breast-feeding rights or exempting the practice from indecent exposure laws.

“This isn’t a particularly radical idea,” Highberger said. “This (Texas) statute was passed while George W. Bush was governor, and he signed it into law.”

Swan said Lawrence mothers deserved similar protection, but that Kansas lawmakers had ignored her requests for state legislation on the issue. She turned instead to Highberger.

“Breast-feeding mothers need as much support as possible,” Swan said. “If we don’t have support from the public, women are less likely to breast-feed.”

Swan said, however, that aside from the fitness club encounter she hadn’t run into problems breast-feeding her now 17-month-old daughter.

“Lawrence has been pretty safe place, a pretty supportive place to breast-feed,” she said. “But then again, the places I go … are usually locally owned. I can’t imagine it being a problem in one of those places.”

Supportive commission

The Lawrence City Commission is on the record supporting breast-feeding, with mayoral proclamations in favor of the practice every year since 1998. Mayor Mike Rundle on Tuesday will designate this week — Aug. 1-7 — as “Breast-feeding Awareness Week,” an annual designation sponsored by La Leche League.

That, Hack said, is as far as the commission should go on the matter.

“I think it, again, oversteps our bounds in terms of what we should and should not legislate,” Hack said of a proposed ordinance. “It puts me in a difficult position, because I am a firm supporter of breast-feeding.”

Highberger disagreed.

“I think it’s unfortunate that people are disturbed by seeing a nursing mother,” he said. “I think we’re raising an entire generation who think the purpose of the breast is to sell beer, instead of providing the best possible nutrition for the baby.”