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After much speculation on the impact of a new federal law requiring certain employers to give unpaid pump breaks to certain employees (and my advice to Curb Your Enthusiasm), the U.S. Department of Labor has issued a Fact Sheet.
Fact Sheet #73: Break Time for Nursing Mothers under the FLSA restates the requirements of the amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act which went into effect this past March and which requires unpaid breaks for certain employees to pump breast milk and private space in which to pump.
While the text of the Fact Sheet provides little clarification of the new law – the penalty to employers for violating the law is still unclear – and is not an official position statement or regulation, it may indicate the Department of Labor is better prepared to accept complaints than it was in March.
Employees seeking more information should "call [the DOL] toll-free information and helpline, available 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in your time zone, 1-866-4USWAGE (1-866-487-9243)." While there have been no public reports of employees using this new law, I have also seen no reports of the DOL rejecting complaints. Any nursing mother having trouble with employer compliance with the federal workplace pumping law should feel free to write about it here.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Department on Womens Health, is having a contest to choose the cover photo for an update of its Easy Guide to Breastfeeding. I popped over there when I saw the notice on Twitter and thought the choices weren't very interesting. They are generic photos, none of which clearly show a latched baby. I decided not to vote because I didn't like any of the three choices. There was something just plain vanilla about all three.
Elita over at Blacktating has a great post on why I saw vanilla. Mother and child in all three photos are white. Not only do I agree with her on the impropriety of having only white babies to choose from but I find some of the comments to her blogs disturbing. Go over and have a look.
Even if one thinks it is legitimate to chose a representative baby by the skin color of the majority of babies born in the U.S (a questionable criteria, in my opinion), take a look at the U.S. Census Bureau data on the "race" of women who have given birth in the previous twelve months for 2006-08. Add up all the people who identify as non-white in some way and compare that number to the number of those who identify as white. "Average U.S. mom" is not "white."
In the three photo choices, both mother and child are white. I don't have the statistics (I don't find either the U.S. Census or the website for the Census Bureau particularly user-friendly), but I suspect the number of non-white babies born in the U.S. is even higher than the number of non-white mothers. So making both mom and baby white is even more inaccurate if we are using the "average dyad" criteria for choosing the appropriate government document cover photo.
I am not arguing that there is any particular physical characteristic that makes one photo a better choice than another. I don't think the mother or child have to be part of the majority race (if indeed the U.S. still has one). I would vote for the photo I think is more beautiful or most what I associate with breastfeeding. I would chose the photo that seems most realistic or perhaps even most interesting or most compelling. But if the U.S. government is truly asking people to make a choice, we have to be given choices. "White, white or white"? No contest.
The workplace pumping provision of the federal health care bill sounds like great news for women who pump breast milk in the workplace. Who could complain about a federal requirement that all employers give reasonable unpaid breaks to employees who need to pump for their nursing infants? On closer examination of what the law actually does, I think many of you will complain.
On its face, the new law, Section 207 (r) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), requires unpaid break time for employees to pump breast milk for a child under age one. In a country that truly supports breastfeeding mothers and their children, women should be paid for pumps breaks. Children should breastfeed until at least a year so mothers can pump for as long as their children need them to. The new federal law has a hardship exception for employers of fewer than 50 employees. It is still unclear how many employers will evade the new requirements under an as yet undefined hardship exception.
But the problem with the new federal workplace pumping law is much bigger than all that. The problem is that there may be no way for most women to use it at all.
Go back to the FLSA. To be covered by new Section 207 (r) you have to be an employee to whom the FLSA applies in the first place.
Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. Section 13(a)(1) and Section 13(a)(17) also exempt certain computer employees. To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $455 per week.
Basically that means that if you get a salary, you are probably not covered by the FLSA and not entitled to whatever new federal workplace pumping benefits there are. Well then, the exempt workers should at least be happy for the nonexempt – the hourly workers, those women covered by Section 207 (r), right? Well, hang on.
The first thing I researched about the new federal workplace pumping law was whether there was a penalty for employers that don't comply. Finding the answer is much harder than it would appear. Go back and read the text of the bill. No, you didn't miss it. There is nothing about enforcement, penalties or remedies.
But you can't stop there because new subsection (r) is an amendment to Section 207 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. (I know this is confusing but ride along with me.) So you need to go to the FLSA and read Section 207. See if Section 207 has some enforcement, penalties or remedies. Hmm. Nope. So then you read the entire FLSA. (Actually, you don't need to unless you want to. I reread it for the first time since law school.)
There are lawyers who do exclusively FLSA work but, fair warning, I am not one of them. You can find the penalties though. Section 216, which is long and convoluted. From what I can tell, penalties are available if the employer's violation resulted in lost wages or unpaid overtime pay. But Section 207 (r) specifies that pump breaks are to be unpaid. So it appears that an employee would have to get fired to have lost wages. And women don't want to get fired over needing to use a breast pump at work.
In the real world, if an employee can't get pump breaks or a pump space, she needs an order, either from a court or a government agency, requiring the employer obey the law. What she needs is an injunction. But for injunctive relief under the FLSA, you need to look at Section 217. Did you read it? No mention of it applying to Section 207.
So what will happen to an employer who refuses to comply with the new federal workplace pumping mandate? So far, I haven't been able to find a labor lawyer who can tell me. And that makes me wonder whether the answer is "nothing at all."
The Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, has the ability to issue "Administrator Interpretations" which clarify what the FLSA means. However it is unknown when any will be issued concerning employer obligations under Section 207 (r). Unless there are complaints filed, Wage and Hour will have no reason to issue any "Interpretations."
Now, some employers are going to provide break time and pump space to all employees who need them. Some employers already do. As I wrote in Pumping 9-5 in Mothering back in 2008, 26% of all U.S. employers provided some sort of lactation support in 2007. But the study from which that figure comes does not specify how much lactation support. It is unlikely that a quarter of all U.S. employers give both unpaid break time and a place to pump that meets the requirements of the new FLSA Section 207 (r): "a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public."
Let's also remember that only thirteen states, plus Puerto Pico and the District of Columbia, have laws that require some employers to give unpaid breaks and a place to pump to their employees. Of those thirteen, only five states (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, and Vermont), as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, have laws that penalize employers for failing to abide by workplace pumping laws.
Let's take a look at what large corporate law firms appear to be telling their large corporate clients. Some corporate law firms appear to be advising large companies to comply at least minimally. A few point out that this amendment may contradict existing FLSA regulations which require that employers pay employees for breaks up to 20 minutes.
So what should you do if you are an hourly worker whose employer is not complying with FLSA Section 207 (r)? Contact the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division at 1-866-487-9243. Look around the Wage and Hour website. Have a confidential conversation at the toll free number. And then, if you would like to share your story with others, e-mail me. I am currently collecting information from workers whose employers refuse to comply with FLSA Section 207 (r). Until we know whether this new federal law can actually help women pump in the workplace, I will be writing the stories of women whose employers fail to comply with it.
A recent episode of the PBS program Frontline was called "The War on Vaccines." The title alone should have been the tip off that the producers' goal was to inflame and incite – to assume this was an entirely adversarial discussion between diametrically opposed viewpoints. But I knew that my colleague Jennifer Margulis, Contributing Editor at Mothering where I am Politics Editor, was interviewed on the program so I felt obligated to watch. I knew also the show would feature pro-vaccine zealot Paul Offit – as famous for his vehement opposition to all questioning of vaccines as he is for the money he takes from vaccine manufacturers.
Imagine I insert an ominous voiceover here. In case you don't have time to watch the entire Frontline report, I can give you a feel for the experience. For all fifty minutes, you are constantly reminded the discussion – oh, just suspend your disbelief and accept there is a discussion – is life or death for every child. Make sure you are really worked up about dying toddlers because the Frontline producers want to make sure you have an opinion about vaccines at the end of the show that is linked to the images you see on the screen and hear in the voiceover. We are moved and motivated by the sights and sounds in film. Having worked in television production I know how this works but I think any discerning viewer can figure that out. If this were not so, we would all just read the paper.
One of the opening scenes in Frontline's "The War on Vaccines" is about a helpless innocent baby coming into the world waiting for mommy to do all she can to keep her safe and healthy. You see through a car windshield the sign for Doylestown Hospital but, if you watch this online, the section is called "A Visit to Ashland, Oregon."
"A new life begins," says the ominous voiceover. Little Rachel Murphy is coming into the world. But wait. Mommy is on her back in an operating room at Doylestown Hospital with a curtain between her and the birth. Yup, she is having a cesarean section. "It's a girl!" says a member of the team pulling Rachel out of her mother's uterus which has been surgically lifted from her body. "AW!" says Rachel's mother who can not see her own child. The very serious narrator comes back and explains that little Rachel had been born into "a world filled with countless germs." Then we have a series of camera shots of Rachel being handled by medical staff, in a cart being wheeled down the hall, getting her first vaccine at an hour old (according to the ominous voiceover) for Hepatitis B (a form of Hepatitis contracted primarily through sexual intercourse or I.V. drug use, so use of this vaccine assumes either Rachel's mother is infected or Rachel has been pretty busy in her first hour outside the womb). Some time more than an hour after all of this has taken place away from Rachel's mother, we finally see a camera view of Rachel and her mother together – her mother still flat on her back post-surgery.
Wow. The joy of birth in America. Strangers will handle you, wheel you around, and pump you full of chemicals – some of which are toxic – before you even get a chance to meet your mother. That world full of countless germs? Well, that would be the hospital. Some of Rachel's protection against these germs have been washed off of her before she can get a whiff of her mother's breast where the colostrum is waiting for her. A hat has been put on her head which she does not need because her mother's body could provide warmth and the exchange of scent between Rachel and her mother could help an already challenged breastfeeding relationship.
Next we have some Centers for Disease Control party line on the benefits of vaccination followed promptly by, with a dark lowering of the voiceover's tone, the announcement that some communities in America are resisting the CDC advice and have much lower rates of vaccination. I could be wrong about what appears to me to be a misleading connection between little Rachel Murphy's birth and Ashland. If you didn't see the hospital sign, you don't know where Rachel was born. I think one could easily think, hearing Ashland, Oregon named as a pocket of vaccine renegades, that Rachel was born in that community. So in case you were confused, here is a little geography lesson Mr. Ominous Voiceover omits.
Doylestown Hospital is in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Doylestown is about an hour north of Philadelphia. Now I don't necessarily have a preconceived notion about any particular hospital's c-section rate. And I will look carefully if a hospital offers a birthing center. Birthing centers often (though with decreasing frequence nationally) have midwives and lower rates of c-section. However, if you hit the home page link on the Doylestown Hospital website for what purports to be that hospital's "birthing center," you come to a page with a huge graphic of people in white coats and surgical scrubs under the headline "Maternity Care Reinvented." Below the cluster of white coats and surgical scrubs is the tag line, "Doylestown Hospital Welcomes CHOP Newborn Care at Doylestown Hospital." CHOP, for those of you closer to Ashland, Oregon – that renegade town that is 3000 miles away from Doylestown – is Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, the professional home of … you guessed it, Paul Offit.
As a not so amusing side note, I glanced over at the "birthing center" physicians to see the name of the surgeon who cut my third son out of me at a different hospital. I have two profound memories of that man. One was the frightening tower of formula cases behind him in his office. He was such an unpleasant man I tried to mentally will the boxes to fall and crush him. I asked him about all that formula and whether it wouldn't be better to encourage women to breastfeed their babies rather than assume they will formula feed. He snarled his response: "Would YOU want to nurse quadruplets?" He was a specialist in multiple births (the reason I had been coerced into being seen by him). I replied, "I certainly would want to try." He made a disgusted sound and refused to discuss it with me anymore. The other memory I have of that doctor is what he shouted to me as he was scrubbing in for that dreaded third c-section. "This is a tubal as well, right?" He and I had never had any discussion of his performing a tubal ligation and I had hoped to have more children. "NO!" I shouted back, more than a little frightened that he might have asked this question after I was unable to respond. His response was his usual sneer. "You would do this again?" I think I will remember forever glancing over at the array of scalpels a nurse was counting while I was being prepped, thinking violent thoughts along with "what an asshole."
Back to Frontline.
Jennifer Margulis has written a blog post I highly recommend about what she sees as the failings of "The War on Vaccines" and I highly recommend you read it. At least two of her complaints are mine as well. All of the doctors and government officials shown in the final cut of this Frontline are opposed to any variation from the CDC recommended vaccine schedule. The conclusion one is forced to draw is that there are no physicians – particularly no respected physicians – who challenge the statements made by Offit. Not only is that untrue but if you read Dr. Jay Gordon's blog post concerning this Frontline piece, you find out that he was interviewed for hours as was Dr. Robert Sears. As Gordon describes in great detail, the producers made a deliberate choice to exclude these respected doctors who offer a different viewpoint from either extreme presented by Frontline.
Another dangerous and professionally irresponsible choice made by the Frontline producers was to entirely exclude discussion of the ideological space in between Offit's "all vaccines on the CDC schedule no matter what" position and the "no vaccines ever under any circumstances" position erroneously attributed to Margulis. There are many parents and professionals, like me, who believe that every parent must examine each vaccine and each child and decide whether the benefits of a particular vaccine outweigh the risks. This is called "selective vaccination" and I have been practicing it with my children since my eldest son was a year old.
I allowed doctors to vaccinate my now nearly sixteen year old son on the CDC schedule when he was born. There were many fewer vaccines on the schedule back then, I trusted my carefully chosen pediatrician and did as I was told. But, as is my nature, I did my research and as I read more studies I began to question whether he needed all of the shots and whether he needed them at the times they were being given. Tetanus may have been the first one I questioned. I have a particularly violent physical reaction to the tetanus vaccine so I was worried that he might as well. I researched how one gets tetanus and wondered whether my child, with his access to clean water, disinfectant and a tetanus shot if he has an injury so deep one can't be sure washing alone will protect him – well, why did my son need to risk the reaction I get to the vaccine? Then I read a study about the MMR vaccine. I don't even remember what it was about but I remember it was in Lancet, a journal one's pediatrician should be expected to read. I asked my pediatrician a question about the study and he said he knew nothing about it. I wanted to discuss my concerns with him before making the decision to give the vaccine to my son. The pediatrician was surprised I thought the decision was mine to make. And then he said it. With a patronizing laugh he said, "Your Medline privileges should be revoked." I was not amused. That was the day I decided my children would be selectively vaccinated. I would be the one who decided whether my children needed a particular vaccine at a particular time. I would do something public health officials can't do. I would look at just one child in his own unique environment with his own unique biology and family history. I would assess the risks and benefits of each vaccine for each child.
If you let the imagery and ominous tone of Frontline's "The War on Vaccines" wash over you, you would never know that parents could make intelligent and safe decisions for their own children. You would never know there are doctors who support parents' ability to do this. You would think that I make my parenting decisions based on what I see on YouTube. In fact, I chose selective vaccinating before I had even heard of YouTube. I read peer reviewed medical journal articles and consider the advice of a wide range of medical specialists including Dr. Jay Gordon and Dr. Robert Sears. The Frontline producers would have you believe that parents taking control of the medical care their children receive is a bad thing.
In between the interviews portraying extreme and irreconcilable views, along with the frightening images of sick children, there is interspersed B roll of children in a gymnastics class. Hmm. Is gymnastics there to lighten the mood by showing happy children at play? Or is it there to suggest the metaphor of risky behaviors parents encourage their children to engage in? After all, the chances of my child dying of chicken pox is far lower than the chance of my child being seriously injured as a gymnast. Or are the producers trying to leave us with that uncertainty – is that child flying through the air going to land safely or break her neck? Regardless, it is just manipulative.
So what do you think? I am not going to give you a poll and don't encourage you to participate in Frontline's two choice poll. On my blog as in life, you have more than two choices. I'd like to hear how you make your decisions about vaccination. If you saw the Frontline episode, I'd like to hear how balanced you think it was. And if you just want to to write about vaccine decision making and/or how media portrays it, let's hear it.
When I was pregnant with my first son, I gave myself permission to eat as much as I wanted. On some level I decided "you're eating for two now" could reasonably be interpreted as "you're eating for twelve now." Having had a long history of binge eating and binge dieting, being pregnant gave me a margin of error I had never allowed myself (if you have ever weighed yourself before getting in the shower because dry hair is lighter than wet hair, you know what I mean). By the time I was ready to give birth, I had justified my way to a 50 pound weight gain. I consoled myself with the prospect of the sudden weight loss giving birth would bring. The average baby weighs about 8 pounds, I figured, and the placenta and assorted fluids had to weigh another 4 or 5 (yes, I looked up the weight of the average placenta) so in just a few hours I would take off at least 12 pounds. Cool. But then I would still be 35 pounds overweight. I panicked. Then I read that breastfeeding burns calories. Yes! I knew I would breastfeed – had never considered not breastfeeding. Now, breastfeeding came with weight loss benefits. Yay and pass the Doritos.
I knew exactly how much I weighed the day I gave birth. I know this because I made a point of weighing myself before leaving the apartment for the hospital. I don't remember the number now – I've had therapy – but even in hard labor, I was thinking about getting thin. I didn't get back on that scale for five days. The birthing center "squat and leave" birth I had planned became a cesarean section, a post-operative infection, and aspiration pneumonia. My new son and I (and my baby daddy who slept on a convertible armchair in my room) were in the hospital for four long days. Even after getting home, my priorities had shifted enough that getting on the scale was not the first thing I thought to do. But I thought of it on the second day home.
I had been through hell. Not only had a baby, placenta and assorted stuff been surgically removed, I had done a great deal of vomiting and no eating. I figured I must have lost a ton of weight. I got on the scale with very high hopes. I got on and off the scale four or five times. I asked baby daddy if something bad had happened to the scale while we were in the hospital. Somehow I weighed four pounds more than I had before giving birth. My weight loss master plan had been foiled by being on an I.V. for four days. I was more than 50 pounds overweight. Oh. My. God.
While I admit I figured out the number of calories I burned each hour I breastfed, I didn't do anything differently in my breastfeeding relationship in order to lose weight. I read lots of stories of women whose weight just fell away. I heard of women who were struggling to keep weight on. I was not one of those women. There was a time I felt betrayed by the breastfeeding weight loss myth. In the end, post-partum, as during every other period of my life, I lost weight through diet and exercise. Okay, truthfully just diet.
There has a been a fresh run of news stories about breastfeeding and weight loss. I don't know why – perhaps yet another tall, thin, actress attributed her rapid return to svelte to her breastfeeding and not her personal trainer. I always wonder why these stories are considered news. Are these stories about breastfeeding and weight loss so popular because it encourages women to breastfeed? Do women really make the decision not to use formula because they think breastfeeding leads to rapid weight loss? Wouldn't that just be sad? Or is there just titillation in reading about Angelina Jolie's breasts?
It makes me angry – no amount of breastfeeding was ever going to turn me into Angelina Jolie. Did I want breastfeeding to help me take off the weight I shouldn't have put on in the first place? Yeah. Would I have made a different infant feeding decision based on whether breastfeeding helped me lose weight? Of course not.
The great Amy Spangler wrote this piece about the scientific evidence concerning breastfeeding and weight loss. It is short and to the point. Breastfeeding can result in an average weight loss of 4.4 pounds. This is a good thing but in the long list of ways in which breastfeeding is superior to formula feeding for both mother and child, it is no big deal. So how about more breastfeeding journalism that matters and less that creates unrealistic expectations for us just plain (chubby) folk.
Back in July of 2007, I gave a session on Breastfeeding and the Law at the La Leche League International Conference in Chicago. Good session, if I do say so myself, which you can buy on CD here. [Disclaimer: I don't make a cent if you buy it.] While at the Conference, I also did a podcast which has just become available for free here.
So why listen to me talking about the state of breastfeeding law over two years ago? Well, sadly, while there have been some new breastfeeding laws passed – both good and bad – breastfeeding law, and the public attitude toward breastfeeding rights in general, really haven't changed much.
Word of warning, the podcast is almost fifty minutes long so grab some knitting or a hungry baby or something else to do while you listen. I think there some amusing things to learn about my parenting life (how many times do I use the word "clueless" to describe myself as a new parent?) and the role La Leche League has played in it (and how I took my job as Group librarian entirely too seriously). Also I talk about the history of breastfeeding law, current laws and attitudes, and my experience working with the Ronald McDonald House moms. The Ronald McDonald House incident had happened recently and, if anyone is unclear about this, neither Ronald McDonald House of Houston nor Ronald McDonald House Charities has ever dealt appropriately with the moms. So you are going to hear a good bit of justified Jake outrage.
Hope you enjoy it and would love to hear impressions. If nothing else, you have to love a podcast that ends because the interviewer's baby needs a diaper change. 
Stacey Anvarinia, the North Dakota women who pled guilty to child neglect for allegedly breastfeeding her infant daughter while intoxicated, has been arrested again. According to the Grand Forks Herald, within hours of Anvarinia's sentencing to 18 months imprisonment, all but six months suspended and with an option to serve part of the six months in substance abuse treatment, she was arrested for slashing the tires on a truck parked in the lot of her apartment building. No word on to whom the truck belonged but I do wonder whether perhaps it was to Delbert Harrison, the man Anvarinia said had beaten her when she called the police for help the night of her arrest for child neglect. Regardless, the police found her "hiding in a closet and appearing intoxicated." (Yes, once again it appears police did not feel it necessary to do a blood alcohol test.) She also had cuts on wrists severe enough for police to bring her to the hospital before bringing her to jail. Well, she got a hospital visit this time rather than the "go directly to jail" card dealt by police after she was kneed in the head last February.
Let's review:
-Woman calls police for help because she is being beaten by her boyfriend as she tries to leave her apartment.
-Police arrive, describe her as "extremely intoxicated" but do not question her ability to care for her six week old daughter until she "began breastfeeding her infant in front of us."
-Woman is never given a blood alcohol test.
-Woman is charged with felony child neglect and the man she identifies as having beaten her is never arrested or charged. In fact, the state lists him as a witness in the case against her.
-Woman loses custody of her child for six months, is then sentenced to a minimum of another six months away from her child, leaves the courthouse after sentencing and slashes someone's tires as well as, possibly, her own wrists.
A North Forks Herald article concerning Anvarinia's sentencing hearing last week reported that the officer on the scene in February testified:
Anvarinia’s demeanor, a strong smell of alcohol on her and the alcohol containers throughout the apartment suggested to him that she was intoxicated.
and
he saw Anvarinia shake the baby girl, hold her without supporting her head and, at one point, hold her upside down by one leg
However, none of this is in the original incident report by the same officer. If a six week old infant were being held upside down by one leg and shaken, would you wait until the mother put the child to the breast to arrest her for child neglect? Would the breastfeeding and nothing else be in the arrest report?
If we are to assume that Anvarinia indeed has an alcohol problem, it was some solace that, though she lost custody of her daughter for at least a year and her abuser walked away with no charges, her sentence included substance abuse treatment. Well, not anymore. In today's report:
Stacey Anvarinia, 26, had been allowed to spend at least part of her sentence at a substance abuse treatment facility, but Judge Sonja Clapp of the State District Court rescinded that option today.
The judge has sent a battered mother who allegedly has an alcohol problem straight to jail and, as punishment for allegedly getting drunk again, won't let her go to alcohol treatment.
Mothers can learn a lot of very disturbing lessons from the Anvarinia case. If you are being beaten while trying to escape an abusive boyfriend, calling the police may result in losing custody of your child. And your abuser won't be charged with any crime. If you plead guilty to charges for which the state appears to have very little evidence in exchange for a lighter sentence and substance abuse treatment, you better not abuse substances before you get treatment because the judge will change your sentence to deny you the treatment you need. So the punishment for being abused is losing your child and the punishment for being an alcoholic is not getting alcohol treatment. Please, someone tell me who this protects?
As promised, here is an update on Stacey Anvarinia, the North Dakota women who pled guilty to child neglect for allegedly breastfeeding her six-week-old daughter while drunk. For more on what appears to be a startling lack of evidence, see my post here. My suspicion that Anvarinia pled guilty as part of a deal for a lighter sentence and return of her baby seems to have been spot on.
According to the Grand Forks Herald, rather than the maximum sentence of five years imprisonment, Anvarinia was sentenced today to six months which she can serve in a substance abuse treatment facility. No news story published before today has mentioned whether Anvarinia had custody of her infant daughter since the arrest. In my previous blog post, I wondered whether she might have waived her right to trial in order to get her child returned to her. The Grand Forks Herald reports that at Anvarinia's sentencing she said:
"I’m very sorry for what I did, and I know it was wrong,” 26-year-old Stacey Anvarinia told the judge. “And I would like to continue working toward getting my daughter back.
So Anvarinia does not currently have her daughter and does not appear to know when she will regain custody of her. She was arrested in this case on February 13, 2009. As of today's sentencing then, she has been without her daughter for nearly six months and can now, it appears, look forward to at least another six months without her.
The brief news released today makes no mention of Delbert Harrison, the man Anvarinia says was beating her when she called police for help. As of last week, he had not been arrested or charged. Anvarinia's sentence for calling for help is a year without custody of her daughter, six months of which will be in some sort of detention.
Even if Anvarinia was intoxicated when police arrived – something for which there is apparently no evidence other then the police shock at her breastfeeding in their presence – is the loss of custody for a year (or more) and detention for six months an appropriate sentence? If you were a breastfeeding mother in need of help, how willing would you be to call the police? You might find yourself nursing an infant one minute, and regaining custody of a toddler a year later.
UPDATE/CORRECTION: According to the New York Times:
Clapp sentenced Anvarinia to 18 months in jail with all but six months suspended and said Anvarinia could get credit for chemical dependency treatment.
So Anvarinia's sentence is more severe than I reported above. Many thanks to Cate Nelson for the heads-up on this.
When I read the Associated Press story this past June about the guilty plea for "child abuse or neglect" by a North Dakota woman alleged to have breastfed her child while intoxicated, a few things leapt off the screen at me. I wondered why this mother had pled guilty. As a lawyer I know that people don't plead guilty because they are guilty. Guilty pleas are generally the result of a deal. The accused is waiving the right to a trial in exchange for an agreed upon sentence or in order to be charged with a lesser crime. Sometimes they plead guilty because they are frightened or inadequately represented or fear losing or being separated from their children. This woman pled guilty to the original charge so the "deal for a lesser charge" theory can be eliminated. Why then?
Also of significance to me was that the police were called to the mother's home in response to a "domestic disturbance" call. Often "domestic disturbance" means that the call was in response to domestic violence. Had the original call been made so police would protect the mother?
The next Associated Press article contained a few more clues and some disturbing admissions on the part of the police. This led me to take a look at the Grand Forts Police Incident Summary and States Attorneys Office charge statement. According to these official reports, Stacey Anvarinia stated:
[s]he was assaulted by her boyfriend identified as Harrison, Delbert.
She stated he kneed her in the chin and struck her face when she attempted to leave.
Officers observed red and swelling area on the bridge of her nose, a small scratch to her left cheek, and a red swollen area on her chin.
So Anvarinia had called the police because she had been the victim of a crime. She called for help.
Also according to the police reports, "she was extremely intoxicated." How did the police know this? Neither the police reports nor subsequent police comments to the press give any indication. No report says police smelled alcohol, saw alcohol, heard slurred speech, and the police did not administer a blood-alcohol test. What behavior did Anvarinia engage in that led to her arrest for child abuse or neglect? She "began breast feeding in front of us." Paramedics were called but they transported the baby to the hospital. Battered Stacey Anvarinia was taken to jail.
Reports of this story led to much debate about the safety of drinking alcohol while breastfeeding. That is certainly an important issue. However, for Stacey Anvarinia, I wonder whether we have any reason to believe she was intoxicated at all. As this case got more press, the Grand Forks police have gotten a little defensive on this point:
This case is more than just the breast-feeding. It was the totality of the circumstances," said Grand Forks Police Lt. Rahn Farder. "It is quite unusual for a mother to be breast-feeding her child as we are conducting an investigation, whether she was intoxicated or not.
Well, what truly is the totality of the circumstances? In defense of itself, the police cite her breastfeeding as … what? Evidence of her intoxication? Might having been recently beaten cause one to seem disoriented? Check the time she is alleged to have committed the "crime." 3:57 a.m. Had she slept at all that night? She had injuries to her face. Did she have a head injury? Despite protests that breastfeeding isn't the issue, the police still only point to her breastfeeding in front of them as being "unusual" in her behavior.
What then happened to Delbert Harrison, the man identified as having beaten Stacey Anvarinia? He was neither arrested nor charged with any crime. Why not?
According to a 2005 study in the American Journal of Public Health, homicide is the third leading cause of injury-related death for women who are pregnant or who have given birth in the previous year. A 2002 study in The British Medical Journal concluded that a woman's risk of domestic violence doubles during pregnancy and the year after birth. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported in 2005 that due to poor reporting, we really don't have accurate figures on how high the rate of homicide is for women during pregnancy and the post-partum period because few states report whether a homicide victim was pregnant or had recently given birth. Even given the admitted under-reporting, homicide was found to be the second leading cause of injury-related maternal death. Of those deaths, 57% were caused by gunfire.
Stacey Anvarinia could have been a homicide statistic. According to the police report, she was beaten while trying to leave. She reached out to the police to save her. Instead, they arrested her.
According to news reports, Anvarinia will be sentenced this Friday. Let's see how much jail time you get for breastfeeding in front of the police you ask to save your life.
I woke up this morning shaking from a nightmare. My jaw hurt from grinding my teeth. My palms were sore from clenching my fists.
I knew immediately that it had been a bad dream but it has been difficult to shake off. In it, I was in a hotel room in a foreign city with my eldest son and a man from my past. An abusive, disturbed man who remembering still makes my skin feels as if it is not my own. In the dream I was struggling to find all of my son's and my clothing so that I could us sneak away. For some reason, my son and this man were going somewhere together and, again inexplicably, I thought this would help give me a chance to gather all of our things. But when the man returned my son was not with him. He said that my son had taken too long to get in the car so he had left my son on the street. During the rest of the nightmare I was screaming my son's name out of the window and walking the streets searching for him, bellowing his name in hysteria. Finally, in despair, I went back to the hotel where I found my son had returned. He didn't know I had been looking for him and he just wanted to tell me what a good time he had had meeting new people and seeing new things. It was a reenactment of a conversation I have had with him many times in real life but in the dream I could not stay calm as I hollered about not disappearing without telling me where he is going, not staying away for more than twenty minutes without calling, how frightened I had been, how dangerous the world is.
And then I woke up. Realizing my son was safely asleep upstairs and that this man from my past is long dead did not help me with the panic attack I suffered for several hours.
No consultation with Freud is necessary to understand why I had this nightmare and why I had it when I did. Tomorrow my first born, my baby, will turn fifteen.
My son is bright and engaging. He chats up anyone who stands still long enough. He wants to know what you are passionate about and he wants to tell you about his favorite architect, the local community feud about the election of township commissioners, the quality of programming on BBC (we live in the US). My son trusts people until they show they can not be trusted.
When I was fifteen, the long battle between my divorced parents over who wouldn't have custody ended with both refusing to keep me. I was on my own, hiding from the social workers who would put me in foster care if they knew. From the age of fifteen, until my son was born sixteen years later, no family member gave me shelter. Most of the time no one in my family even knew where I was and, as far as I can tell, none of them cared. My children are the only blood relatives I have lived with since I was the age my baby boy will be tomorrow.
I don't spend much time feeling sorry for myself or dwelling on my childhood. It was, I am, it is (thankfully) over. But it has been difficult comparing myself at fifteen to my son at fifteen. He is a curious and independent child (like I was). He can do his own laundry and cook himself most meals (as I could). But he has not seen pure evil. He has never had to worry about where he would sleep. He has never … many things no child should do or see or know.
Most days these differences between us make me feel relief. I have spared him these things. But on days like today, covered with the sense memory of dreams like last night's, I fear for him. Who will he trust in his innocence? Have I, in keeping him safe, left him exposed?
Like many mammals, my son's trips away from me are in larger and larger circles. He proudly reports the miles on his bike odometer and I pretend I can breath. Tomorrow he will be the age I was when I was utterly abandoned by the people who were supposed to keep me safe. We will have cake and go out to dinner. And I will continue to worry how safe he really is.
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