Even though this entry is going to provide more opportunity for porn spam in my comments, I still felt the subject was worth noting.
This editorial raises some interesting questions on privacy. The topic, breastfeeding, is so personal to women it is often hard to separate emotion from reason. My take is that if business owners don’t have the right to tell women to be discreet about nursing, then it won’t be long until more of their rights as private property owners go out the window.
In the editorial I linked, there was a mention of Starbucks’ policy for women to either cover up when they nurse or to go to the bathroom to do it. This seems reasonable to me, although I might suggest that if Starbucks hasn’t already done this, for their own customer relations, they should provide at least a comfortable chair in the bathroom. For the most part, women I know who nurse do not have a desire to expose themselves in public. I think most women are reasonable about it. I think this is a case of the extremests getting in an uproar because they feel personally constrained.
Here’s my last thought, which may sound contrary to my other comments, but it it still comes to mind: breastfeeding mothers who occasionally expose themselves in public are not nearly as offensive as the rest of the half-dressed population we see in public everyday.