Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/21/police-officer-who-breastfed-a.html
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Now that’s community service! In the U.S. much of the public would condemn her. So much for our so-called christian values.
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She’s making panda mothers look bad.
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The US trade representative will be threatening sanctions for discriminating against baby formula.
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Well boobies are bad! It says so in… um… Neuteronomy… chapter 8?
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Hello from Argentina!
This was a publicity stunt. It’s actually a bad idea to do what this officer did, since there are several illnesses that can be transmitted via maternal milk (HIV is one of them).
If women want to donate milk, there are milk banks where the milk will be studied and cleared for consumption.
This was a very opportunistic photo-op in a troubled time in Argentina: an abortion law has just been rejected in the Senate, the police is getting more repressive, unemployment is climbing and inflation is through the roof.
That’s why they will take any opportunity to distract from the real issue. This is a distraction.
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I understand the view that the police are looking for good PR, but do you have reason to believe this photo does not depict what it appears to depict or was pre-planned as a photo op?
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I would rather live in a world where police controversy revolved around “excessive use of breasts” rather than “excessive use of force”
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I don’t think it was pre-planned – maybe I expressed myself wrong (English isn’t my first language).
My point is that there are so many wrong things going on there that the government is trying to ride as far as they can on this – but far from being a good thing, it depicts the sorry state of our hospitals and the ignorance of this policewoman, who thinks that milk can be freely shared like that.
If that police officer has HIV and the baby catches it through the milk, then what?
It seems likely that the police officer would know her HIV status considering that she recently had a child herself and presumably has access to health care. Certainly the odds of her carrying HIV aren’t any higher than the odds of the baby’s birth mother carrying HIV.
According to the Center for Disease Control it’s extremely unlikely for a child to contract HIV through a single feeding of breast milk even when the mother is HIV positive.
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Meaning no disrespect to Sgt. Ayala, I have to wonder what’s going on in the hospitals of Argentina that makes this even necessary.
Malnourished children crying because hospital staff aren’t feeding them isn’t something I see much around here…
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You could post this under ANY article, about ANYTHING. It’s always off topic.
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I was going to quip with “Why not both?” but yeah… I’m extremely tired to the depths of my soul of excessive use of force by the police.
This is what I immediately thought. I’m not nearly as prude or repressed as a number of my fellow Americans, and I still think randomly breast feeding another person’s child is not a safe thing to do. Malnourished or not.
Our country has also become a land of confusion, so we also tend to latch onto anything positive in this hellscape of fuckuppery. Since you claim to be from Argentina, I will take you at your word on both where you are and your read on this event.
Is HIV the only dangerous thing that can be transmitted through breast milk? I’m not being snarky; this is outside of my wheelhouse. I was raised by a very germ-phobic mother. To this day I’ll still hesitate before drinking from a public water fountain and ask myself if I’m really that thirsty.
(an aside)
I passed a police car yesterday and considered how it seemed to have been designed to look powerful and threatening; I can’t really describe it, and didn’t have a chance to take a photo.
That got me thinking on why it would be designed that way. I landed on, “well, like Batman, maybe the look was chosen to drive fear into the hearts of criminals…”
But the problem with that – if it’s true, it might not be, I’m just guessing – is that most of the people who are looking at that car aren’t criminals. So what it’s doing is intimidating everyone.
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Could be more than malnourishment alone prompting the crying. Infants instinctively want to be held and comforted.
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Indeed, the phrase “This is just a distraction from the really important thing!” is a well known ‘opener’ for derailment tactics.
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Yes, there is this magical baby food called formula, why aren’t they giving the baby that? The policewoman looked distinctly uncomfortable in the photo, I don’t think she was enjoying being photographed.
It was amazing she was feeding this kid. It’s weird that she had to. I’m going to agree with folks that either the hospital was in such bad shape they didn’t have formula, that this was a publicity stunt or possibly both.
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There are diseases that can be transmitted through breast milk, but generally when the CDC’s position is basically “eh, don’t stress out about it” then it’s probably not high on the threat list. Mothers have been breastfeeding each other’s children through all of human history.
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But…did the officer have HIV? If every kind or loving act is reduced to an absolute worst-case hypothetical scenario, we’re probably heading down the wrong road.
Sure, that guy gave the homeless person a hot meal and a clean set of clothes, but what if the food had E. Coli and the clothes were infected with lice? Ok, that bystander pulled someone off the railroad tracks in front of the train, but what if they pulled the person too hard and hurt their back?
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FOR EXTRA CREDIT: when evaluating mysterious allegations of problems in faraway places, it might be helpful to recall that “unemployment” and “inflation” are stereotypically right-wing complaints
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Yeah, I too am wondering why an infant in a hospital was so hungry it was screaming in distress. side eye
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