TheStar.com - Don't rush to praise Bush's strange AIDS pledge
Toronto Star
Michelle Landsberg
Sunday, March 09, 2003

"...A lot of hard, dull and useful work goes on in legislatures, but few parliamentarians can claim to have done anything so exemplary and wholesome as Kirstie Marshall, an Australian Labour MP. Late last month, Kirstie Marshall breastfed her two-week-old daughter in the legislature.

She (and baby Charlotte) were promptly ejected, on the grounds that only elected persons are allowed in the legislature when it is in session, and Charlotte was not elected.

Breast-feeding is one of the most purely beneficial and socially constructive acts known to humankind. There is nothing in the world that comes close to it in building strong little bodies, minds and personalities. Also, it is free and earth-friendly.

Parliaments, business-owners and institutions that object to a mother quietly feeding her infant are, in the great scheme of things, idiotic.

Mind you, Canadians can't afford to be too smug. Scarcely a month goes by without some report of a conscientious mother being humiliated for responding to her infant's needs. This month it was Toronto mother Michele Choma, who was in the children's book section of Cole's book store in Cloverdale Mall when she sought to calm her crying two-month old with a discreet under-the-jacket snack.

The manager stormed over and declared, according to Choma, that this was "offensive" and "disturbing to small children" (I would have thought the opposite) and furthermore, "You're leaving and you're leaving right now."..."