Feminists For Choice

This story is unbelievable. Mary Martinez was nursing her 4-week-old baby during a shopping trip at a Michigan mall when she was singled out and shamed for breast feeding her newborn baby. According to this particular Target, breast-feeding-boobies are nothing more than a weapon of mass destruction. Via Broadsheet,

While Mary Martinez was shopping in a Target store in Harper Woods, Mich., recently, her 4-week-old baby got hungry. And because some people still haven’t gotten it through their heads that women often use their own breasts to feed hungry babies, a security guard who saw her doing just that told her she had to leave because she was breaking the law. Which she was not. Target mistake No. 1.

When Martinez and her husband, Jose — a police officer who knew full well his wife wasn’t doing anything illegal — refused to leave, the security guard called the cops. Target mistake No. 2. Although the local officers who arrived confirmed that it is not against the law to breast-feed in public in Harper Woods, Mary Martinez says she felt humiliated and forced out of the store anyway. “Two security guards, the manager or team leader, two officers, they just made a spectacle and a scene. I feel like I can’t go to that specific Target anymore.”

Now, Target mistakes 1 and 2 can be written off as the poor judgment of individual employees, but 3 is the real eye-popper: When contacted by Detroit’s Fox affiliate, Target’s corporate headquarters said that breast-feeding is allowed in their stores, but “This specific situation escalated to a point where we were concerned for the safety of our guests, so law enforcement was called.” Are you kidding me? How on earth does feeding a baby “escalate” to a safety issue for other customers?

Well said Kate. In what world does breast feeding threaten the overall safety of Target customers?

This is most certainly a huge mistake on the part of the Target employee that assumed breast feeding was “illegal”, however; the statement released by Target corporate headquarters wasn’t much better. Making the claim that breast feeding could some how pose some “seriously risk” to the physical-well-being of other customers is absurd and completely re-enforces the public/private dichotomy.