Jul 09
20
Breastfeeding Drunk an Arrestable Offense?
A new mom has recently made headlines for being arrested for coming to the door after reporting a domestic disturbance, while an infant was suckling her breasts, and she was apparently drunk. It is known that you should not breast feed a child directly after drinking alcohol, but alcohol is permitted in moderation during breast feeding, it’s just recommended the mother wait a few hours for the alcohol to pass out of the system satisfactorily enough that the milk will not be affected and the infant is still getting “safe” milk. Alcohol passed on to an infant can cause side effects, the most well known being abnormal weight gain.
However, the arrest causes some concerns and raises some questions that may surpass the legal boundaries and get into one’s morals, which is supposed to not be a line that is crossed when it comes to the law. Should mothers who have been suspected of drinking and then breastfeeding soon after or even during the drinking, be arrested? Is this something that crosses the lines into a person’s life too much? I think that’s a difficult call.
The woman was arrested on child endangerment charges, which had nothing to do with the domestic disturbance complaint she had called the police for. She actually came to the door feeding the infant, apparently inebriated, with obvious signs of physical abuse ot her face from her boyfriend, however she ended up being arrested because of what the police viewed to be endangerment of the child.
This may be one of those clear cut cases where she was crossing the line of acceptability, however, does this pave the way for mothers to be prosecuted after they’ve had a few drinks and wait the accepted amount of time to breastfeed their infants? The line can get blurred if you ask me. Sure, this woman should not have been breastfeeding her infant while she was completely drunk, clearly she should have waited for the alcohol to come out of her system to breast feed, however, one does wonder whether this is the law meddling in someone’s personal affairs a bit too much.
Also, there is the question on whether she may make more serious errors of judgement with this child, which I’m sure is why she was arrested in the first place, perhaps to set a precedent that observation of that serious of an infraction of being drunk while breastfeeding is unacceptable by societal standards. What do you think? I’m a little torn, I know it’s wrong, however I worry that this could cross over into a grey area with other cases.
