WA Breastfeeding Bill Moves Forward

Good news: A bill that would make it legal to breastfeed in public has made it through committee in the Washington State legislature, and seems likely to move forward.

Interestingly, the bill was heard not in the health care and wellness committee--which generally deals with "soft" (ahem) issues like child care, women's health, and health-care worker qualifications --but in the state government and tribal affairs committee, which deals with ethics and civil rights. Tami Green, the Lakewood, WA Democrat who's sponsoring the legislation, notes that while Washington law currently protects breastfeeding women from getting arrested for indecency, "it doesn't stop people from asking you to leave because they don't like that you're doing it." Green's proposal would define breastfeeding as a civil right subject to state discrimination law; if it passes, women who are harassed in or kicked out of public places for feeding their children will be able to file a complaint with the state's human rights commission.

There's another major difference between the two committees, too: While the health care committee includes seven women (and one openly gay man) the state government committee includes just one woman.

Green says her bill "got a whole different kind of attention" once it moved into the government affairs committee. "There are whole bunch of men on this committee who all have daughters and wives, many of whom have breastfed their babies, who are all very supportive of the bill." On the other hand, she says, "the GOP is very nervous about giving it this high of a profile. They really don't like it going into the civil rights statute. To me," she adds, "it seems like a no-brainer."

I asked Green whether, if her bill passes, she'd consider legislation in the future making it mandatory for large employers to provide non-restroom facilities for nursing mothers to breastfeed or express milk. Green said that although "I'm hoping that raising it to this level, people will realize that this is important and we won't need another law," she's "not opposed to going further" in the future.