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A place to discuss your infant feeding choices and experiences.
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This is about a bill in the Massachusetts state legislature -- it's the formula industry's response to recent attempts to ban their advertising bags, including formula samples, from hospitals in Massachusetts. (See www.banthebags.org for more background.)
The Massachusetts Breastfeeding Coalition has prepared a flyer that explains why the current bill (misleadingly described as related to maternity patients' rights) is a bad idea:
http://www.massbfc.org/pdf/H2257.pdf
The concepts in this flyer, IMHO, make a marvelous toehold for understanding what this website is all about: formula marketing. An excerpt from this flyer reads:
They routinely disguise their efforts to market an unhealthy product by citing product “education," consumer “rights," “choice" and “freedom," yet acknowledge the superiority of breastfeeding in order to give an air of credibility.
This will undoubtedly sound familiar to anyone who has spent time poking around the MomsFeedingFreedom.com website.
Your thoughts? I think the flyer is a great, concise explanation of this issue. A must read for everyone posting or lurking here!
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That's good - the flyer makes important points. It sounds like the bill is just full of more of the emotion-eliciting phrases, and is therefore designed to just anger people by causing them to vote on the bill based on feelings instead of by actually thinking it through logically. How about a bill stating that other bills cannot be written with "fighting words," LOL!
I am going to look for the actual text of the bill... if anyone finds it before me, please post it here (a link - I'm guessing it's many pages long, as any of that type thing tends to be).
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Well, I cannot find the actual text of the bill... by the way, does anyone know if this is just a bill that would apply to Massachusetts, or is it country-wide?
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Here's the text of the bill being considered by the Massachusetts House:
http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/house/1 … t02257.pdf
This is only for Massachusetts, but I'm sure that passage of this bill would set a dangerous precedent for other states' legislatures. Let's do what we can to oppose it!
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songbh -- pls. see my post under the It's Not About Freedom of Choice forum. my question for the group... do you really believe baby formula is "unhealthy"? and if so explain to me what you think that means in reality -- is it breast feed OR let your baby die? and do you believe nursing a newborn should be mandatory for all new mothers?
regards,
andrea
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andrea wrote:
songbh -- pls. see my post under the It's Not About Freedom of Choice forum. my question for the group... do you really believe baby formula is "unhealthy"? and if so explain to me what you think that means in reality -- is it breast feed OR let your baby die? and do you believe nursing a newborn should be mandatory for all new mothers?
regards,
andrea
No, it is never "breastfeed or let baby die." Never! If a mother is just not producing milk, well, then of course that baby needs something to give nourishment, and if formula is the only alternative you have (as it is in many cases, as we don't exactly have wet nuses lined up outside the hospitals, lol), then of course it should be used. That's actually what it was invented for.
Nursing a newborn should not be mandatory for all mothers... but the information should be given to them, unbiased. No marketing from companies trying to make money. but nobody should come in and force a mother to try to nurse. Her prenatal visits should include info on it - mine had zero info on nursing! sure, I would like to see all mothers try for 4-6 weeks (the time it takes for it to become"natural" for many moms), but i don't want them forced. I think that people should be given accurate info and then take responsibility for what they do with it. The problem lies in people being given misinformation or being pushed to use something that will make money for somebody else.
I answered the "unhealthy" question in the other thread, in case you hadn't seen it.
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