Nursing mother considers human rights protest

By Jason Misner, via the Burlington Post:

A breastfeeding controversy has surfaced in Burlington.
Palmer resident Alison Kennedy says she is filing a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission after she was allegedly asked by a lifeguard at Tansley Woods Community Centre last weekend to move to a different part of the building following a complaint she was breastfeeding her one-year-old son, Logan, in a warming pool.
City officials counter that while Kennedy was informed someone had complained about her breastfeeding, she was not asked to leave the warming pool.
Kennedy, who works in the education profession, told the Post that on Sunday (Feb. 22) afternoon, she was in the warming pool with her husband Robert and sons Logan and Trevor, 4. She said Logan indicated he was hungry. Not wanting to deny her child food, Kennedy said, while sitting in the front corner on one side of the warming pool she began breastfeeding Logan.
She said she didn’t take off her top but simply exposed enough of her breast for her son to feed. She said the top of the water came to her chest level and the pool jets made the water bubbly.
According to Kennedy, a lifeguard approached her and asked that she move to the deck area on the other side of the larger swimming pool because someone complained the breastfeeding made them feel “uncomfortable”.
Kennedy said she refused to go to the chair area, saying it was a colder part of the building and kept her more exposed to people since a glass wall separated the chairs and the community centre’s lobby.
“I told (the lifeguard) it was illegal to ask me to leave,” said Kennedy, who noted she has breastfed at Tansley Woods several times before without incident. “It was embarrassing, it was humiliating (and) it was degrading.”
The lifeguard, Kennedy said, told her there was a concern the baby could spit up in the water.
Kennedy said she wasn’t told who had made the complaint.
Kennedy said she refused to breast-feed Logan on the deck chairs. By this point, her older son said he was hungry and the family left Tansley Woods to go eat at a restaurant.
Husband Robert said he supports his wife “100 per cent.”
“Mothers should know their rights,” he said.
City spokesperson Donna Kell said there is a written “procedure” that stipulates breastfeeding is allowed at all city facilities.
“The procedure staff follow is breastfeeding is permitted in all city facilities,” she said. “The city does try to create a safe and caring family environment and breastfeeding is part of that.”

Read the rest here.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I do not dispute the right of a mother to breastfeed her child. That's a given for me. But at the same time, I believe people have a right to respond, and to ask that mother to breastfeed somewhere else. In a private space especially, but even in a public. If I expect the right to act, then I must allow that others can react to my actions. Otherwise, I only believe in my own freedom, and that is the very definition of hypocrisy.