Packing and Airport Inspection ???'s

[Rootee]

Just running into this thread now.

I'm an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and this case - like others similar - DOES have ground for a successful suit and is causing considerable discussion among health care professionals who hate to hear of any situation in which a breastfeeding mother is put into an embarrassing situation.

The idea of tasting human milk should NOT be repugnant. After all, it "is" fit for human consumption.

The problem here is that we have not heard of any cases where mothers with bottles of non-human milk were told to "take a taste". If all bottles of whatever concoction are also to be "tasted" when traveling through security, then I agree reluctantly that human milk in bottles should have to go through the same security measures.

Incidently, the cost of a prescription of human milk from a milk bank is currently $4.00/ounce. That's a precious commodity to dump for an unnecessary reason. Interestingly, many ounces of banked frozen human milk are daily flown across the country for sick babies and older babies and children who have medical conditions that make it impossible for them to survive on anything other than human milk. I sincerely hope that security issues will not make this difficult in the future.

Ruth

 

[mcnuss]

Rootee -- as a lawyer, I will tell you that if no one should sue bc of embarrassment unless that embarassment has caused harm. It's this kind of thing that causes us all to wonder what has happened to the legal system!! Since this woman was asked to do the same thing that (at that time) every passenger carrying a "beverage" was asked to do, she was personally not singled out for any form of discrimination bc she was a lactating mother. By the way, the TSA has gotten rid of the dumb policy as of a couple of weeks ago. Now "beverages" must be sent thru Xray; this was as a result of a test that showed that someone could put a grenade in the bottom of a large "to-go" cup, sip from it, then proceed merrily on their way thru the metal detector.

You are right that there are many cases of true discrimination of breastfeeding moms - I am ashamed to say that we are having a bad situation here in NH right now with a nursing mom who was asked to leave a public swimming pool bc the teenaged lifeguard was uncomfortable with it.

Let me also say that I was proudly a breastfeeding mom for the first year of my child's life, and since I am not the modest type, she was nursed any and everywhere I would have felt comfortable giving her a bottle. Please note that we used to call my milk "liquid gold". I hated going on long business trips where I would not have adequate storage facilities and had to dispose of my milk. It made me want to cry. I wished that I could have donated it and even tried once, but they sure do make it hard to get into those programs.

ABN