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Breastfeeding in public 'not indecent'
In reality, breastfeeding in public is legal in the US. However a number of states have started passing laws specifically exempting public breastfeeding from public indecency laws. Below is a report that was published in The Good Life in 1994, with a 2008 update:
In a country known for its liberal attitudes, women in the US are only now winning the right to feed their babies naturally -- and publicly -- without being harassed or accused of “obscenity”. A number of states recently passed laws protecting the rights of nursing mothers to breastfeed their infants in public places. New York state was the first to do so back in 1984, after one mother successfully sued for the right to nurse her child at a public pool. But that case was little publicized and the law was passed quietly. Few Americans know of it. In 1993, however, nation-wide publicity was given to a case in which a woman in Florida was harassed when she tried to breastfeed her child in a public place. This led Florida to pass a law guaranteeing a mother’s right to “breast-feed her baby in any location, public or private, irrespective of whether or not the nipple of the mother’s breast is covered during or incidental to breast-feeding.” Florida not only changed the existing law to exclude breastfeeding from being classified as “indecent exposure.” It created a new law stating that breast feeding must be encouraged in the interest of mother and child. North Carolina followed soon after. Earlier in 1994, Virginia passed a similar law.
2008 UPDATE: As of January 2008, the status of breastfeeding in public in the US is as follows:
Click here for full details of legal issues concerning breastfeeding in public in the US.
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