LIKE IT IS

I don’t know which is more ridiculous.

A bill introduced in the state House “protecting” a mother’s right to breast feed in public or the octuplets mom’s fairy tale that she’s trying to breast pump enough milk for her litter.

It’s been a dozen years since breast feeding in public was taken up by the Legislature so far as I know. That’s the last time I wrote about it anyway.

For starters, there is no law against it, just standards of good taste and common sense. Sponsor Rep. Tami Green (D-Lakewood) told a State Government Committee hearing that she wants women to feel comfortable feeding babies wherever they are. Women testified they had been asked to leave restaurants and department stores when they tried to breast feed their babies.

No one spoke against it and House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler said people who think breast feeding in public is obscene should get over it.

I was reared during a time when the vast majority of women nursed their babies and I never saw one do it openly in public or even at home. My mother nursed all 10 of her children and none of us ever saw her do it, other than with a baby blanket protecting her privacy or she went into a bedroom. She never did it in public.

I’m sure if the women Reps. Green and Kessler are “protecting” were as unobtrusive as their mothers before them, they wouldn’t be asked to leave a public place when it’s nourishment time for Junior. I’ll repeat what I said the last time. For those of today’s young women who are anxious to show off their mammary glands to strangers, I suggest public places provide special seating for them and viewing stands for the oglers.

As for the octuplets’ mom, I suggest she get a couple of Guernseys and somebody to milk them for her and the tots.

Quite a few years ago, when, as I recall, the first sextuplets were born as the result of fertility treatments, I wrote that this was only the beginning. What, I asked, are we going to do when progress in conception allows women to produce eight, 10, a dozen, 15 babies at one birthing?

If we can progress to the point where mega multiple conception births are possible, will we also have progressed to the point they can all survive? If you were as outraged as I over the fact Octuplet Mom already had six children aged 2 to 7 from implants, be prepared to be outraged again and again.

With eight now the record for number of live births at one time, there will be women who will want to try nine embryos or 10 so they can be No. 1. So far it hasn’t done Octuplet Mom a lot of good because of resentment over the previous six, but things will pick up. The government will come through. We’re learning now she’s been on welfare for the six although she denies that, calling it “a program for people with needs.”

I’m tired of hearing her pitch her story about how lonely she was as an only child so she was “fixated” on a big family. It seems to me that six was already a big family.

I also don’t believe a word she says about how she only wanted one more child but accepted eight implants and left them all to grow because implants are rare and she couldn’t count on even one survivor.

I read she’s given them biblical names. Too bad. I had my own suggestions. Peso, Franc, Dinar, Rupee, Krone, Shekel, Shilling and Dollar.

Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.