Marking World Breastfeeding Week, Congressmember Carolyn Maloney joined the New York City Breastfeeding Promotion Leadership Committee and new mothers last Friday for a ride on the A train. This is the third annual breastfeeding caravan for the committee, which initiated the subway campaign in 2004 after several mothers were wrongly ticketed for breastfeeding their children in subway cars.
“We should not have to be here today,” Maloney said. “New York State law guarantees a woman’s right to breastfeed, but until we have a national standard for breastfeeding rights, other cities and states will still be able to prevent mothers from feeding their babies in public. Nothing could be more natural than breastfeeding: it has a clear health benefit for both the mother and child.”
In New York, anywhere a woman can be in public she can legally breastfeed.
In 1999, Maloney passed legislation that guarantees the rights of women to breastfeed on federal property. Maloney is also the author of H.R. 2122, The Breastfeeding Promotion Act, which would encourage employers to make their businesses more family friendly and would expand the rights of breastfeeding mothers in the workplace.
