Bad Parent: Driven To It
I breastfed in a moving car.
by Vicki Glembocki
April 24, 2008
"Mom," I say, as if this is a sudden, new idea, and not something that I've been trying to grow the cajones to do for the past hour. "Mom, I am going to put the car in park. You are going to crawl up to the driver's seat and take over."
"Vicki, I can't drive in this . . . " she starts to say. But I've already opened my door and am trotting around the front of the minivan to the sliding door. In the amount of time it takes for me to get in and close the door, for my mother to stop saying, "Oh my God. Oh my GOD!" the traffic doesn't move an inch. I pull Blair out of her seat.
This is bad, I think as I calculate the likelihood that the guy in the car next to us can see through the tinted windows, that this guy will dial 911, that 911 will call child services. Because this is illegal. I'm well aware of this. All states have mandatory child restraint laws for babies. This is very bad. I'm so going to jail.
Here's what I'm not aware of:
If a cop pulls us over, I probably won't get arrested, just slapped with a $100 fine. Though the punishment in each state varies, this is the max for the offense here in Pennsylvania.
This is bad, I think.
(Of course, there was that Ohio woman who was sentenced in 2003 to three months of house arrest and a $300 fine when a trucker saw her breastfeeding in her car. But she was driving.) If we get in an accident and, God forbid, the baby dies, I could be charged with involuntary manslaughter (if a prosecutor doesn't think that losing a child is punishment enough) for "the doing of an unlawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner . . . [that] causes the death of another person," which, in Pennsylvania, could mean up to ten years in prison.
Here's what I'm also not aware of:
Even though breastfeeding in public isn't illegal anywhere in the country, the guy in the car next to us could look over, see my boob, call 911 and claim I'm indecently exposing myself in public. And, depending on the cop who arrives on the scene, I could be charged. In Pennsylvania at the time, there were no laws protecting me or, for that matter, the woman who made headlines early last year when, while nursing her son at a local mall, a security guard asked her to cover herself. (In 2007, Pennsylvania enacted its first law exempting public breastfeeding from criminal laws pertaining to "indecent exposure," "lewdness," "obscene and sexual conduct" and "a nuisance," though no breastfeeding mother in PA has ever been charged with any of these offenses).
States like Washington, though, exempt breastfeeding from "indecent exposure" only. So my friend in Seattle, Sarah, could have been fined for breaking the car seat law and cited with, say, obscenity when she followed her half-mile rule — as in, "a half-mile from home is okay." "When we were a few blocks from home," Sarah explains, "I'd sometimes give in, take my screaming son out of his seat, and let him nurse."
©2008 Vicki Glembocki and Nerve Media
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