Speak.Collaborate.Listen - Anne Boyer | 'On her 13th birthday --'

Anne Boyer | 'On her 13th birthday --'

When my kid was born I wanted to breastfeed her, but she was jaundiced, so the medicaid pediatrician on call threatened to take her away from me for breastfeeding. They called the social worker in to see if they should take her away from us for breastfeeding. It became a war — they put her in ICU on an iv, this fat 9 pound baby, because I insisted upon my right to breastfeed her. I wouldn’t leave her for a second: I was fighting. The doctor thought her removal from me would work to convince me to let her be fed forumla, but it didn’t. Even when they finally let her go, they sent social workers around to check on her for this.

It was, of course, just the first threat.

When I’d given birth to her it was summer; when I left the hospital it was cold like winter.

That a poor mother could have medical authorities put into motion the removal of a child for breastfeeding was, I think, not very unusual. I went to La Leche League and found at the time the same medicaid doctors had actually removed infants. The way poor mothers were treated is the way all non-humans are treated. It is the very typical common story of the human but in the total disaster of biopolitical control of women and the poor.

the whole piece here

8 months ago