The Perils Of Breastfeeding In America

By James Donahue

November 2005

When Dorian Ryan attempted to breast feed her baby at a Colorado swimming beach she was assailed by a park ranger and issued a citation for indecent exposure.

Ryan, who was shielded behind two umbrellas and a towel, was mortified. She complained to park officials and pointed out that Colorado law permits public breast-feeding anywhere and at any time. The ticket was voided. But Ryan still is smarting from she called a “humiliating and degrading” experience.

Ryan got off easily.

Mercedes Archuleta was nursing her baby by her husband’s side in the family car when Colorado police pulled them over, ordered her to stop nursing the baby, dragged her out of the vehicle and threw her against it with her blouse still open, and then led her away in handcuffs.

Archuleta, a Mexican-American, spent the night in jail before she was released. Authorities said it was a case of mistaken identity. The arresting officers thought this woman with babe-in-arms and other terrified children in the backseat, was a wanted felon. They gave her no time to cover up, put cuffs on her, and led her off to the local jail. Apparently the police didn’t ask any questions or check her identification.

Jacqueline Mercado, a Peruvian immigrant, and her boy friend, Johnny Fernandez, took pictures of Mercado’s young children splashing naked in the bath tub. Fernandez also got a picture of Mercado breastfeeding her baby. They took the film roll to a local drug store in Richardson, Texas, to be processed. A week later Richardson police were searching the home for kiddie porn and a state child welfare worker was there to take the children out of the home.

It seems that breast feeding photos are a second-degree felony in Richardson.

With nothing more than the pictures to support the charge that the photos were related to sex or sexual gratification, the pictures were presented to a grand jury. The grand jury indicted Mercado and Fernandez for “sexual performance of a child,” a 20-year felony.

Mercado and Fernandez were eventually released from prison and the charges dropped following action by a lawyer. Child Protective Services was still keeping Fernandez’s children at last check.

Guess what folks. This is America. This is Christian extremist America where the sign of a woman’s bare breast even to do the very thing that breast was intended to be used for, nurse her child, can be a crime.

Even where it isn’t a crime, police officers sometimes think it is.

This is because Christianity rules in America and Christianity frowns on sex. That the god child was born of a virgin is saying that the only pure woman must be a woman that never engages in sexual intercourse with a man.

That the Roman Catholic Church insists on celibacy for both its priests and its nuns forces these church servants to do something so unnatural, it is small wonder that the church has been rocked with the scandal of pedophilia in recent months.

That an entire nation has been rocked with the scandals of child molestation and that violent criminal acts against women in sexually suppressed America should be no surprise. Pornography is a thriving business. And inbreeding is common because children in the nation’s neighborhoods are unwittingly marrying half brothers and sisters.

Not only has the church caused unnecessary deprivation among its members, it has played a key role in the dumbing-down of America and the overpopulating of our dying world.

The women of America should do what 15 protesting mothers in Harrisburg, Pa., did. They gave birth to their children in a hospital that discouraged breastfeeding by separating mothers from their babies at inappropriate times, and sending new mothers home with bottles and packaged formula.

These women stood in front of the hospital with signs, many of them nursing babies, in public protest. Four were arrested for trespassing because they refused to leave when the police came.