I took my son to a pediatrician appointment for an ear infection today. While we waited for the doctor, I grabbed some pamphlets to try to entertain myself and my son. One of them was from La Leche League. This is an organization that ostensibly supports breastfeeding, but ends up supporting the philosophy "a woman's place is in the home." Amazingly, many Madison progressives think La Leche stands for supporting women's rights.
It's unfortunate that an organization promoting any political agenda is able to get its materials into so many clinics and hospitals. It would be like the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) made pamphlet's about drug abuse for clinics. I agree with reforming drug prohibition, but that political discussion shouldn't find its way into doctor's offices.
If you read La Leche's materials, you'll read about how breastfeeding is one of the most important things you can do for the health of a baby. When you look at the scientific papers on the topic, you find there is some evidence that breast-feeding is linked to slight reductions in the probability of various health problems, but we do not yet know if that correlation is causal.
I'd love to know how to get La Leche materials out of clinics and hospitals. Those materials feed a political agenda misrepresented as science to people who are at time in their lives when they need good medical advice.
