Opinion
There's no faulting the timing of Rotorua MP Steve Chadwick's bill proposing that café owners and employers, among others, be forced to allow mothers to breastfeed their babies in public view. But the timing does not mean that the idea is not silly.
Chadwick, a former midwife, chose
World Breastfeeding Week to announce the bill, which will trample on the rights of those traumatised by catching an unintended glimpse of a curve of unclad mammary flesh.
For unwilling onlookers possessed of such delicate constitutions, of course, the world must be full of hidden - or rather appallingly unhidden - horrors. How must they cope with the fashion pages of daily newspapers, much less the lingerie ads? What terrors await them when they tune into game shows on the telly?
Is it not high time that squads of counsellors from Victim Support were deployed to help these poor souls recover from the needless distress to which they have been so cruelly subjected? The Government must act now.
Well, actually, it must not. Noble though Chadwick's intentions are, this is not a matter for legislative interference. The member's bill will have to be drawn in a ballot before it is considered and so it is far from certain it will ever come before the House. But there are far more important matters for Parliament to attend to than legislating to protect the sensibilities of people silly enough to be offended by the sight of a mother feeding her baby.
We should all make it our business to assert the rights of nursing mothers, telling objectors to pull their heads in or otherwise avert their horrified gaze.
Mothers told to cover up must be encouraged to stand up for their rights and the rest of us should be their cheerleaders. We don't need a law to tell us to act like human beings.
