Via @simonwstockdale, I’ve become aware of the following case in Michigan, where a woman was chastised for breastfeeding in court:
A woman fighting a Michigan boating ticket that had already resulted in a bench warrant says she had no choice but to take her 5-month-old with her to a Tuesday hearing as he recuperated from a fever.
Quiet for more than two hours as she waited for her case to be called, the boy then awakened and needed to eat. So, since she was wearing appropriate clothing for the purpose, she breastfed him, Natalie Hegedus tells WWMT.
This didn’t go over well with the judge, when Hegedus’ case was called while her son, Landen, was still eating.
“You think that’s appropriate in here?” Judge Robert Hentchel asked her, according to a transcript of the 7th District Court case in Paw Paw.
Hegedus replied that she had to feed her son, and it was legal to do so.
“Ma’am, it’s my courtroom, I decide what’s appropriate in here, come on up, okay,” Hentchel then tells her. “You have to understand that a judge, the laws don’t apply in a courtroom, the judge’s law applies, do you understand that?”
Hegedus tells the station she wouldn’t have minded if the issue had been handled more discretely, but she felt publicly humiliated by the judge’s tone and the implication that she had done something “dirty” by nursing her baby.
Chief Judge Paul Hamre said he felt Hentchel had done nothing wrong, WwMT reports, calling it “inappropriate” for a defendant to appear in a criminal court holding a baby and noting that Hentchel nonetheless hadn’t sanctioned Hegedus or even asked her to leave the courtroom.
I had to go to VCAT when my daughter was four months old, and one of my fears was that my daughter would require feeding while our matter was on. Fortunately our matter came on before the next feed was due.
If the poor woman was waiting for over two hours with her infant son, then it’s understandable that her child might want to feed, and it sounds like she was discreet. And if breastfeeding is legal anywhere in the state, then you can do it in a courtroom. The court can’t be above the law (surely that’s part of the point of the system). One response to the judge in this case might be to hand him the baby and say, “I’m happy not to feed him, but you explain to him he can’t have his food!”
For goodness sakes’, we’re mammals. Get over that fact, Your Honour.
