For Nicole Steineger, breast-feeding her three children has been a natural choice.

It’s convenient, too.

“It goes with me where I go,” said Steineger, whose youngest child is a year old. “If I’m in the middle of an aisle at Target and my baby needs to eat, I can do that. I don’t have to prepare anything.”

Organizations including the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department and La Leche League International, are using this week – World Breast-Feeding Week – to raise awareness of breast-feeding’s health benefits.

“It’s a public health issue,” said Jane Tuttle, a La Leche League leader in Lawrence. “I think it’s something doctors should encourage. Doctors don’t hesitate to tell people to lose weight or quit smoking. They shouldn’t hesitate to tell mothers to breast-feed.”

According to the National Women’s Health Information Center, breast milk can help babies build immunity to a host of infectious diseases – including ear infections, diarrhea and respiratory illnesses. Breast-feeding also lowers the risk of breast and ovarian cancers in mothers.

• Senate vote kills public nursing legislation (03-24-05)
• Mothers say they want ‘discreet’ out of breast-feeding bill (03-15-05)
• Bill protects breast-feeding but discreet wording a problem (03-12-05)
• Breast-feeding bill advances, but changes unwelcome (2-24-05)
• Research, legislation back breast-feeding advocates (2-09-05)

Steineger said she hasn’t had any problems with breast-feeding in public. But a Lawrence incident nearly led to a state law supporting the act.

Kansas legislators last winter debated a bill the original intent of which was to declare the state in support of breast-feeding and allow mothers to breast-feed any place they had a right to be.

The measure was prompted by an incident in Lawrence, where a woman said she tried to breast-feed her baby at a health club and was asked by a male employee not to nurse.

A vote in the Kansas Senate referred the proposal back to committee, which killed the bill. It’s unknown if another attempt will be made in the 2006 legislative session.

“Certainly if the bill returns to the Legislature, I anticipate being supportive of it,” said Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia, chairman of the Public Health and Welfare Committee.

Barnett, a physician, said he had become concerned amendments to the bill would have allowed businesses the right to prohibit women from breast-feeding on their property.

“My concern was that mothers would end up having less freedom,” he said.