To the editor:

Why is it that anytime someone has difficulty accepting breast-feeding in public, they automatically compare it to urinating or having sex in public? It is comparing apples to oranges. Breastfeeding is nutrition. Urinating is defecation. Comparing breast-feeding to having sex in public is simply ridiculous. Breast-feeding is not a sexual act.

I also don’t understand statements people make about breastfeeding in public like “I have no problem with breast-feeding in public but women should do it discreetly.” What is that supposed to mean? I have yet to meet a nursing mother who flashes the public intentionally to feed her child. Do people understand that you don’t completely take off your top to nurse? What do people who are offended by a natural, normal and mammalian way of feeding want nursing mothers to do? Wear a burqa everywhere so we can feed our children discreetly?

Nursing mothers and non-nursing mothers are both concerned about the needs of their children yet no one is offended by a non-nursing mother whipping out a bottle to feed her child even though all studies say that breast milk is best. Should we start being offended by her choice to feed her child?

There is absolutely no reason that a law like this should even have to exist, but we have to put one in place in order to protect mothers who are trying to give the best to their children. How sad.

Heather Sexton,

Lawrence