Lactivists don’t trust women to make their own decisions about infant feeding choices. Hence they have come up with a never ending series of coercive and shaming tactics promote breastfeeding over formula. The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiatve insists that women must be “educated” about the benefits of breastfeeding, deprived of access to formula, forced to endure the attentions of lactation consultants and deprived of formula gifts. This week The Lancet even suggested that the ban on formula advertising in industrialized countries should be extended to a ban from social media.
Why? Because breastfeeding is “better” for babies even though lactivists can’t point to even a single term baby who died from properly prepared formula.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Only hypocrites would fail to ban homebirth advertising.[/pullquote]
Surely, then, they should be desperate to apply the same reasoning to homebirth in the US. So why aren’t lactivists calling for a never ending series of coercive and shaming tactics to promote hospital birth over homebirth? Why aren’t they insisting that women must be educated about the benefits of hospital birth, deprived of access to homebirth and forced to endure counseling from hospital consultants? Shouldn’t lactivists be supporting a ban on all advertising by homebirth midwives as well as banning them from social media? After all, babies die each and every week at the hands of poorly educated, poorly trained CPMs (certified professional midwives) and doulas.
Why don’t they call for a ban on homebirths? Because they’re hypocrites. They aren’t worried about the well being of babies; they adore having their own choices ratified as superior.
Shouldn’t lactivists be calling for a ban on anti-vax activism? The harms of anti-vaccine advocacy are several orders of magnitude greater than the purported harms of formula. Children die as a result of vaccine refusal and the harms extend beyond unvaccinated children to other people’s babies too young to be vaccinated and immunocompromised children for whom any exposure to a vaccine preventable illness poses a deadly threat.
Shouldn’t we start by banning Dr. Bob Sears, Dr. Joe Mercola, and Jennifer Margulis (among others) from the Internet and social media? Shouldn’t their books be removed from print and their supplement stores banned from their websites? Shouldn’t every mother be visited repeatedly by a vaccine consultant to hammer the benefits of vaccines into her silly little head? Shouldn’t it be impossible to get a vaccine exemption? Shouldn’t unvaccinated children be banned from leaving the house until they can demonstrate they are up to date on immunizations?
Why stop there? If we are mandated to prevent formula feeding, shouldn’t we be mandated to prevent chiropractic, homeopathy and any form of alternative health? Shouldn’t chiropractors, homeopaths and herbalists be banned from advertising in on TV, in newspapers, on the Internet or social media? Should their books be taken out of print? Shouldn’t we be sending anti-quackery consultants to every home to educate everyone about the dangers of quackery?
I’m going to guess that the same folks who gleefully support bans of formula advertisements would be horrified by bans on advertising by homebirth midwives, chiropractors and homeopaths. I’m willing to bet that the woman who are adamant that formula should be locked up in hospitals would howl if they were deprived of access to homebirth or if they were compelled to endure vaccines consultants hammering away at their resistance to vaccines.
Why? Because they’re hypocrites. They aren’t worried about anyone’s well being. They simply want their personal choices to breastfeed to be held up as the ideal to which other women should aspire.
What about existing bans on tobacco advertising? They are only defensible to the extent that tobacco represents a unique threat to health, responsible for literally millions of deaths each year.
Formula doesn’t harm term babies. Lactivists can’t even point to one death from properly prepared formula, let alone thousands or millions of deaths.
But if we’re going to ban formula advertisements, we should immediately ban advertising by homebirth midwives and doulas, as well as chiropractors, homeopaths, herbalists and all other purveyors of alternative health.
Anything else would be hypocrisy, right?
