Breast-feeding bill advances in Senate

TOPEKA ? The Kansas Senate today advanced legislation that would allow a woman to breastfeed in public.

If approved on a final vote Thursday, the measure will go to the House for consideration. No one in the Senate spoke in opposition to the bill.

“We believe it is healthy for the state to encourage mothers to breast-feed,” Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, said.

Amy Swan of Lawrence was in the Senate gallery. “I thought it was great,” she said after the Senate action.

Swan has been one of the main promoters of the legislation after she was confronted at a Lawrence health club and told to stop breast-feeding her daughter in late 2003.