I was delighted to see the new Equality Law includes legislation to allow women the legal right to breast feed in public, a right that Scottish women already have thanks to the previous Labour led Scottish Executive. As a Councillor one of the things that I developed an interest in was the rates of breast feeding throughout Renfrewshire and the correlation that this had between poverty and ill health, it was appalling, however, with the Breast Feeding awareness information and groups that have been planned by the promotion service the rate has increased significantly in some areas. The Scottish Neighbour Statistics and the Scottish Health profiles record this data and anyone interested can visit the website of the Office of National Statistics or the Scottish Executive.
The right to breast feed without getting asked to leave a cafe or restaurant is important, it is not just the babies that need socialisation but the mothers as well and sometimes getting out for a coffee (decaf of course) is a major release, sometimes going shopping is a major release and you cannot tell the baby to wait till it gets home. I for one am 100% behind this and hope that all parties can agree with at least this section of the legislation.
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