There are a lot of things wrong with the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI), a series of measures designed to promote breastfeeding. Chief among them:

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Whatever happened to maternal choice?[/pullquote]

1. It is shaming, implying that women who choose formula don’t care about their own babies.

2. It is punitive. Women who prefer formula are subjected to hectoring on the benefits of breastfeeding; providers are prevented from using their clinical judgment to recommend supplementation; poor women are deprived of free formula samples; and all women and babies face deadly harm from the closing of newborn nurseries.

3. Worst of all, it doesn’t work; there is no evidence that it improves breastfeeding rates.

However, the ultimate irony is that the BFHI recapitulates the ugliest aspects of patriarchal medical care; it’s about the powerful suppressing the powerless for their own benefit. The breastfeeding industry is overwhelmingly female, white, and relatively well off. Women who choose formula feeding are much more likely to be non-white and poor. Rich white women are trying to force poor black and brown (and white) women to emulate them and punishing them if they won’t.

What’s the difference between doctors banning fathers from the delivery room and lactivists banning babies sleeping in well baby nurseries? There was never any evidence that keeping fathers out of the delivery room had any benefit for babies and there’s no evidence that forcing 24 hour infant rooming in by closing well baby nurseries has any benefit for babies. Fathers were banned from delivery rooms because doctors liked it that way; well baby nurseries are closing because the breastfeeding industry likes it that way.

What’s the difference between doctors mandating enemas in labor and lactation consultants mandating that formula be locked up? Neither benefits babies.

And who benefits from banning gifts of free formula samples? It certainly isn’t mothers since they are losing something valuable to them, and there’s no evidence babies benefit either.

The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative represents a profound power imbalance. Lactation consultants believe their motives are pure; they know better than mothers themselves what’s good for babies.

I’ve written before about gender scholars Annandale and Clark. In their widely quoted paper What is gender? Feminist theory and the sociology of human reproduction, they note:

If we conceive of power as a fundamentally male preserve we are led to gloss over ways in which women may exert power over others, including other women…

They are writing about midwives, but the same questions can be asked of lactation professionals. They can’t point to even a single term baby whose life has been saved by exclusive breastfeeding yet they use their power to enforce it within hospital settings. They can’t point to a single healthcare dollar saved by exclusive breastfeeding of term infants, yet they insist on the expenditure of millions of healthcare dollars to promote breastfeeding.

Natural childbirth advocates railed against obstetric paternalism in banning fathers from delivery rooms though doctors believed it to be better that way. They advocated maternal choice and they were right to do so. We are currently approaching an apogee of lactation maternalism when well baby nurseries are being closed in an effort to force mandatory rooming in of infants because lactation consultants believe it to be better that way. Instead we should be advocating and supporting CHOICE.

The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative deliberately deprives women of choice, substituting the judgment of lactation consultants for the judgment of mothers. It was wrong when doctors used their power to deprive women of choice and it is just as wrong when the breastfeeding industry uses its power to do the same thing.

Australian doula Lizzie Carroll is miffed.

Last Wednesday I wrote about another dead baby born to a member of Meg Heket’s unassisted birth group, and the subsequent praise for the mother “achieving” her goal of a vaginal birth over a baby’s dead body. Meg Heket and the other women who encouraged this mother have blood on their hands; Ms. Carroll and other women who support dangerous homebirths have blood on their hands, too. They bear responsibility for the steadily rising death toll and, not surprisingly, they don’t like responsibility.

Carroll wrote:

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]There’s a big difference between supporting a person’s right to make a choice and supporting the actual choice.[/pullquote]

I got up this morning to find myself tagged in a comment in a group that I am in. I occasionally get tagged in this group by someone mocking my work and so that I can be reminded that I am a horrible human being. Or something like that.

The comment this morning that had my name against it went a step further though. No longer content to simply mock me, I am now being accused of killing babies, by way of supporting a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.

She ridicules those holding her responsible as illogical:

As a supporter of a woman’s right to choose homebirth, if she deems it to be the best option for her, I am responsible for any deaths that occur during homebirth. Regardless of whether I’ve ever even heard of the family in question. BUT what if I were to say (and rightly so!) that all women should be allowed to choose a caesarean if they deem it the best choice for them? Am I responsible for all the women who then die as a result of a caesarean? …

But it is Ms. Carroll who is having problems with logic on a number of different levels. Let us count the ways:

1. There is a big difference between supporting a person’s right to make a choice and supporting the actual choice.

We see this often in the area of free speech. For example, American free speech advocates DO support the right of the Ku Klux Klan to hold public rallies. They DON’T support the Ku Klux Klan and they don’t support what Klan members say.

My position on homebirth is analagous to this. I DO support a woman’s right (bodily autonomy) to give birth where and with whom she wants, up to and including unassisted homebirth. I DON’T support homebirth and I certainly don’t support unassisted homebirth; I often refer to is as “stunt birth.”

Ms. Carroll is being disingenuous when she claims that she is merely supporting a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. She actively and affirmatively supports homebirth itself both theoretically and practically; she profits from it. It’s the difference between supporting the KKK’s right to free speech and offering members a special Klan discount on the purchase of white sheets. This is not a subtle difference, but in her effort to absolve herself of responsibility, Ms. Carroll refuses to acknowledge that difference.

2. There’s a difference between supporting someone’s right to do something dangerous and claiming that dangerous choice isn’t dangerous at all.

Ms. Carroll writes:

What about those of us who support a person’s right to enjoy dangerous sports like rock climbing, horse riding, racing car driving? Are we responsible for any deaths that occur as a result?

If you encourage someone to participate in race car driving by telling them it’s NOT dangerous and the person dies as a result, then you DO bear responsibility for that death. That goes double if you are the one renting out the race cars. The reason that Ms. Carroll and other members of homebirth and unassisted birth groups have blood on their hands is because they refuse to tell women that it is dangerous, not because they support the right to have a homebirth or unassisted birth.

If you see a suicidal person standing on a ledge and you yell “Don’t Jump!”, you aren’t responsible for the person’s subsequent death when he jumps despite your plea. But if you see a suicidal person standing on a ledge and you yell “Jump! Your body is meant to survive jumps from tall buildings!”, you bear responsibility for his dive to death on the pavement below.

3. Evidence based support MUST be based on scientific evidence.

Evidence based support doesn’t mean what Ms. Carroll and her compatriots think it means. It should be obvious to them (apparently it’s not) that evidence based support requires scientific evidence. There is NO evidence that unassisted homebirth is safe. None, zip, zero, nada. So it’s ludicrous to suggest that support of unassisted homebirth is evidence based; it is in direct opposition to what the scientific evidence shows.

These are just the most egregious of the many logical errors in Ms. Carroll’s attempt to shed responsibility for encouraging and profiting from dangerous homebirths.

Ms. Carroll claims that her philosophy can be described as:

‘Throughout my pregnancy I deserve to feel well and whole, physically, emotionally and spiritually.’

I understand how dangerous homebirths and unassisted births contribute to Ms. Carrol’s financial well being, but I’m confused on how they help mothers.

Ms. Carroll, please explain how giving birth to a dead baby contributes to a mother’s physical, emotional or spiritual health. Inquiring minds want to know.

Only a month to go until my book PUSH BACK: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting is published on April 5!

HarperCollins has posted a generous excerpt to whet your appetite. If you prefer a full size version, you can find it here.

[iframe width=”500″ height=”720″ src=”//aerbook.com/books/Push_Back-15368-146063.html” frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”]

Two days ago I wrote about the extraordinary callousness of a group of unassisted birth advocates who brag about “successful” vaginal births despite the fact that the babies died.

The most recent example occurred earlier this week:

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]A woman’s body is designed to produce a live baby, not a vaginal birth.[/pullquote]

…I wanted to tell you ladies that I went into labor NATURALLY ALL BY MYSELF (well after sex that night..) that in itself was awesome bc I have never had that experience before and was starting to doubt my body especially waiting so long! 42 weeks! BUT IT HAPPENED! I labored all through the night and day and PUSHED HIM OUT all 10lb 9oz and 23.5 inches with a 14.5 inch head …

…VAGINAL BIRTH AFTER CESAREAN IS POSSIBLE! UNMEDICATED BIRTH IS POSSIBLE. HOME BIRTHS ARE POSSIBLE. And most importantly OUR BODIES AREN’T BROKEN, THEY WERE DESIGNED TO DO THIS!!! I KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE! lol

The ultimate irony for women who boast about these “successes” is that they are actually spectacular failures. Why? Because evolutionary success is measured by children who live to reproduce, not by how a baby is born. Evolution works on the principle of “survival of the fittest” and the fittest are those who live.

For people so enamoured of what their bodies “were designed to do,” they appear to have missed the incredibly simple, incredibly basic point: their bodies were designed to produce LIVE babies. The unassisted birth advocates preening over “successful” vaginal births are actually spectacular FAILURES. They are so busy exulting over the fact that their bodies aren’t “broken” that they forgot the most important fact; if you “break” the baby’s body, you lose.

Evolution doesn’t care one whit about the process of survival, it only cares about the outcome. Evolution doesn’t care whether a particular animal has black fur or white fur. It rewards the color that offers the best camouflage for the particular environment in which the animal lives. In our current environment, with easy access to technology, evolution rewards those who use that technology to survive. Women who reject lifesaving technology in order to recapitulate birth in nature aren’t winners; they haven’t achieved anything. If their babies die, they are losers.

Evolution doesn’t care that you had a vaginal birth; it doesn’t care that you gave birth without pain medication; it certainly doesn’t care that you had a vaginal birth after a previous C-section. It cares about one and only one thing: whether the baby survives.

Women who let their babies die for lack of obstetric interventions at homebirth or unassisted birth DIDN’T do what “nature intended”; they did the exact opposite. They aren’t successful; they’re failures.

And they’re not responding to natural instincts; they’re defying them. Nearly every female mammal will defend the lives of her offspring to the death. Everyone knows that there is no more dangerous animal than the mother who feels that her brood is threatened.

The woman who consents to a C-section for fetal distress is acting on that primal instinct. She is willing to let herself be cut open if that gives her baby a better chance of survival. The woman who chooses homebirth specifically to recapitulate birth in nature is acting AGAINST that primal instinct. She is more interested in herself and her bragging rights than in the baby’s life. That’s unnatural.

Meg Heket, Ruth Rodley and the other administrators of groups that encourage, support and cheer women to deadly homebirths aren’t merely vile people; they’re losers. Nature isn’t impressed with them; she’s weeping for the loss of innocent lives.

Remember unassisted birth advocate Meg Heket? Heket, you may recall, is the sister of Janet Fraser (My dead baby was not as traumatic as my birth rape). She is also a co-administrator with Ruth Rodley of a number of homebirth and unassisted birth groups. No doubt you remember Ruth. She’s the one who, in the wake of 7 homebirth deaths in 1 week, referred to the death of a baby as “a little hickup.”

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.[/pullquote]

Heket has an extraordinary amount of blood that is on her hands. I cannot keep track of the many, many babies who are dead because she encouraged their mothers to have unassisted homebirths. I wrote yesterday about another member of her group who is boasting about her unassisted VBAC at home despite the fact that the baby is dead (The unspeakable callousness of a homebirth loss mother). Evidently someone shared the post with Heket is this is her response:

No, so I just make sure to make things really confusing so she’s GUARANTEED to misinterpret it on her blog.

I HATE ALL CAESAREANS! NO CAESAREAN WAS EVER NECESSARY AND IT’S BETTER TO DIE THAN HAVE MEDICAL INTERVENTION IN LABOR. Excuse me, I need to go and eat babies now.

PS. I haven’t seen the blog post because I go out of my way to avoid anything and everything she and her cult ever say. It works brilliantly

Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!

But the worst thing about Meg’s inanity is not that she’s dancing on yet another baby’s grave, although that is despicable. The worst thing is that she and her unassisted birth buddies never learn … anything. Despite the astronomical perinatal death toll in her group she has been completely unable to make the connection between the dead babies and their unassisted births. She and her compatriots repeatedly counsel women that they should “trust” birth even though birth lets them down time and time again.

As Albert Einstein explained, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Over and over again Heket encourages high risk women to give birth unassisted at home and over again babies die. She seems to have a serious problem with the concept of cause and effect.

Heket is hardly alone.

“Jackie” addressed herself to me in the comment section of the post about the mother’s callous response to the baby’s death:

…You are disgusting and pathetic to use this mothers tragedy for your douchebaggery blog post! Having lost my father a few weeks ago, I’ve seen first hand how everyone around me copes with death and EVERY SINGLE PERSON handles it differently …

Indeed, they do; there’s a very broad range of normal responses to grief. But boasting about your role in another person’s death is outside the realm of normal, particularly if the dead person is a close family member.

“Wow! Did you see how I was handling driving 90 mph before I hit a tree and killed my daughter?” is not a normal response.

“You’ve got to admit I’m a great arsonist!” is not a normal response to the accidental death of a your toddler in the house fire that you set.

“Look at me! I pushed a baby out of my vagina and killed him in the process!” is not a normal response to your baby’s death.

It’s the response of a cult member and Meg Heket’s unassisted birth group is a cult. The most important rule in a cult is to keep believing in the wisdom of the cult leader regardless of how often he or she is demonstrably wrong. Meg Heket is like the leader of a millennial cult who is constantly specifying the day that the world will end, and constantly being proven wrong. Mentally healthy people would learn from that experience and stop believing a person who is wrong over and over again, but not cult members. They keep believing the predictions and hoping that this time is going to be different.

I write about the deaths of these babies for a reason. I don’t want them to be buried twice, first in a tiny coffin in the ground and then in the minds of the people who were responsible for their deaths. I am not hoping to change the minds of those who made the irresponsible choice; it’s too late for that. I’m hoping to change the minds of the other cult members and, especially, of people thinking about joining the cult of unassisted birth. If I can prevent the death of even one baby, I’ve accomplished the job I set out to do.

Thinking about unassisted homebirth? Then think about how these women sacrificed their babies and think again.

GoodReads is giving away 15 free copies to its members! You can register to win a free copy here.

The baby died two days ago at an unassisted home VBAC. The mother wrote on her Facebook page:

Dearest family and friends, baby Isaac was born 2-29-16 weighing 10 lbs 9oz and 23.5 inches long. With so much pain in our hearts and not knowing how to even say this but Isaac did not survive his birth. We are completely devastated. At this time we’re just asking for prayers of strength and peace during the most difficult time of our lives.

Today Isaac’s mother posted this:

…I wanted to tell you ladies that I went into labor NATURALLY ALL BY MYSELF (well after sex that night..) that in itself was awesome bc I have never had that experience before and was starting to doubt my body especially waiting so long! 42 weeks! BUT IT HAPPENED! I labored all through the night and day and PUSHED HIM OUT all 10lb 9oz and 23.5 inches with a 14.5 inch head …

…VAGINAL BIRTH AFTER CESAREAN IS POSSIBLE! UNMEDICATED BIRTH IS POSSIBLE. HOME BIRTHS ARE POSSIBLE. And most importantly OUR BODIES AREN’T BROKEN, THEY WERE DESIGNED TO DO THIS!!! I KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE! lol

LOL?

She goes on to say:

TRUST YOURSELF, TRUST YOUR GUT, TRUST YOUR INTUITION AND BACK IT UP NO MATTER WHAT! …

Because all that trusting worked out so well for her. While she was busily trusting herself, her baby was dying because her intuition is worse than useless.

Of course, the mother now insists that the baby would have died anyway, although she doesn’t bother to explain why that should be so.

I can’t help but think of the story of the judgment of King Solomon. According to Wikipedia:

Two young women who lived in the same house and who both had an infant son came to Solomon for a judgment. One of the women claimed that the other, after accidentally smothering her own son while sleeping, had exchanged the two children to make it appear that the living child was hers. The other woman denied this and so both women claimed to be the mother of the living son and said that the dead boy belonged to the other.

After some deliberation, King Solomon called for a sword to be brought before him. He declared that there was only one fair solution: the live son must be split in two, each woman receiving half of the child. Upon hearing this terrible verdict, the boy’s true mother cried out, “Oh Lord, give the baby to her, just don’t kill him!” The liar, in her bitter jealousy, exclaimed, “It shall be neither mine nor yours—divide it!”

The king declared the first mother as the true mother, as a true, loving mother would rather surrender her baby to another than hurt him, and gave her the baby…

I guess King Solomon had never met a homebirth mother like this one. She was perfectly willing to let her baby die to have the birth she wanted … and then boast about it.

Hideous!

I’ve been musing about what would happen if anti-vax pediatrician invented a smoke alarm. I imagine it would look something like this:

And it would be just as effective at keeping kids safe as Dr. Bob’s anti-vax advice.

It’s all about the vagina, folks!

At least that’s what natural childbirth advocates appear to think. The sine qua non of the contemporary natural childbirth movement is its “vagmentalism,” the privileging of vaginal transit over everything else, including the health of babies and mothers.

It didn’t have to be this way. The natural childbirth movement arose as a response to the pain of childbirth. Grantly Dick-Read claimed that “primitive” women didn’t experience pain in labor because they understood and accepted that their purpose in life was to have children. In contrast, white women of the “better” classes had been socialized to think they deserved political and economic rights and, as a result, their ovaries shriveled, they developed the disease of nervous hysteria (hyster is Latin for uterus), and their labors became painful.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”#0102DA” class=”” size=””]Vaginal birth is portrayed as an achievement and C-section is portrayed as a failure.[/pullquote]

Lamaze was developed in the USSR in the years after World War II. Soviet doctors faced a problem. Whereas women in the West had access to pain relief in labor, the USSR lacked the money to purchase modern anesthetics. There wasn’t enough for surgery let alone childbirth. They hit upon the idea of using Pavlovian conditioning to abolish or reduce the pain of labor. It was presented as far superior to anesthetics because it was free and available to the proletariat while anesthetics were expensive and available only to the bourgeoisie.

The natural childbirth movement became popular in the US in the 1960’s as a response to the paternalism of American obstetrics and the sedating effects of contemporary anesthetic techniques. Women wanted to be awake and aware for their births, wanted to be accompanied by their partners and wanted to be spared the indignity of enemas and perineal shaving. The vagina had nothing to do with it.

In the 1970’s obstetrics was revolutionized by the introduction of regional anesthesia (spinals and epidurals). Women could now experience the births of their babies (even C-sections) awake, aware and pain free! Women were happy; doctors were happy; but the natural childbirth movement was not happy. Having achieved everything they set out to do by the early 1980’s, natural childbirth advocates could have declared victory and gone home. Instead they moved the goalposts and became rigidly vagmental.

Why? Vagmentalism reflects the contemporaneous (1980’s) resurgence of midwifery. Midwifery had all but disappeared in the US as a result of the improved safety and comfort of hospital birth. Natural childbirth, which gave primacy to the experience of childbirth, gave increasing relevance to midwives who strove to produce a specific birth experience. Indeed, midwifery grew from 275 CNMs in 1963 to more than 4,000 in 1995 to over 11,000 today. Midwives, not surprisingly, began to promote what they could do and to denigrate the things that only doctors could do, like epidurals and C-sections. Organizations like Lamaze reinvented themselves accordingly.

De Vries and De Vries writing in the Lamaze Journal of Perinatal Education explain:

Although there was a period when Lamaze . . . was accused of having sold out (the “Lamaze method” was charged by some with being a male invention meant to replace another male invention of obstetric anesthesia), in the early 1990s, the organization reinvented itself as the champion of normal birth.

In contrast to Grantly Dick-Read and the founders of Lamaze who promised painless birth, or at least comfortable birth, midwives and natural childbirth organizations began promoting physiological birth: vaginal birth. Hence the profound vagmentalism of contemporary natural childbirth advocacy.

This vagmentalism is reflected in a nearly pathological hatred of C-sections. It would be difficult to find a medical procedure that has saved more lives than C-sections have saved. It would be difficult to find a medical procedure that CONTINUES to save more lives each year than C-sections do. No matter, the profound vagmentalism of the natural childbirth movement leads them to insist that C-section rates in the industrialized world are a “crisis,” that C-sections harm mother-infant bonding (there’s no evidence for that), that C-sections lead to long term health problems in babies (they don’t), and, most recently, that C-sections harm the neonatal gut microbiome and change infant DNA (there’s no evidence for that, either).

The effect of this profound vagmentalism on new mothers is pernicious. Vaginal birth is deliberately portrayed as an achievement and C-section is deliberately depicted as a failure. For some women this leads to soul crushing guilt. The desperation of these women to have a vaginal birth leads them to risk their babies lives by refusing indicated interventions. It leads them to risk their babies and their own lives at home VBACs after 2 or 3 or 4 previous C-sections.

Even worse, midwives in the UK have become so committed to vaginal birth as an end in itself that they have let babies and mothers die by refusing to call in obstetricians. Doctors don’t share the midwives’ vagmentalism and consider that whether the baby lives or dies more important than vaginal birth; therefore, midwives want to exclude them.

Pregnant women and new mothers should understand that vaginal birth is not better, safer, healthier or superior in any way for than birth with pain relief or C-section birth. Midwives and natural childbirth advocates are profoundly vagmental because vaginal birth is better for midwives and natural childbirth advocates. Midwives and natural childbirth advocates encourage guilt about pain relief and C-sections so they can monetize that guilt.

The truth is that any woman can attempt an unmedicated vaginal birth; it’s not an achievement since most women who have ever lived have already done it. The achievement is to have a live baby and survive. In other words, the achievement is the outcome, not the process.

Vagmentalism is to midwifery what fashion judgmentalism is to the women’s clothing industry. It’s a way to move product. Vagmentalism is to natural childbirth advocates what race judgmentalism (racism) is bigots, a way to boost their fragile self esteem. It is ugly; it is unhealthy; and it should be rejected.

Lactivists are constantly waxing poetic about the lifesaving benefits of breastmilk. The truth is rather different. If infant formula disappeared tomorrow from the United States, tens of thousands of babies would die; if breastmilk disappeared tomorrow, not a single term baby would die from properly prepared infant formula.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”#88BD4B” class=”” size=””]Infant formula saves far more lives in the US than breastmilk ever could.[/pullquote]

How can that be?

Let’s break it down:

1. Despite lactivist claims, there is no evidence that even a single term infant has ever died for lack of breastmilk.

Sure, breastmilk has benefits even in countries with clean water supplies. (It is the contaminated water used to prepared formula in developing countries that kills babies, not the formula itself.) But the benefits of breastmilk are restricted to approximately 8% fewer colds and episodes of diarrheal illness across the entire population of infants. The other purported benefits touted by lactivists are based on evidence that is weak, conflicting and riddled with confounders.

2. Despite lactivist claims, there’s no evidence that breastmilk is the “perfect food.”

True, breastmilk is the food that evolved to feed human infants, but evolution does not do perfection. Evolution is based on the survival of the fittest, NOT the survival of everyone. If every single baby were breastfed, many would die.

Why? In order for breastmilk to be perfect, it would always be present in the perfect amounts, and all babies would be perfectly capable of extracting it from the breast. However, we know that 5% (1 in 20) women don’t make enough breastmilk to fully nourish a baby, and some babies have issues like low muscle tone that make it impossible for them to successfully breastfeed. When these circumstances occur in nature, babies simply die. In contrast, when infant formula is available, no baby will succumb to dehydration, malnutrition or failure to thrive.

Babies who can’t tolerate lactose or are affected by inborn errors of metabolism can survive on formula because there are a variety of types of infant formula that can meet their needs. If they were restricted to breastmilk, they wouldn’t survive at all.

Even using conservative estimate of 5% if babies who don’t thrive on exclusive breastfeeding, we can calculate that if formula disappeared tomorrow, 200,000 infants EACH YEAR would be at serious risk for malnutrition, stunting of growth and intellectual development, and even death. If breastmilk disappeared, no one would die or have stunted growth or intellectual development as a result.

3. Formula improves the lives of other family members.

Despite lactivist claims, breastmilk is not free. It’s only free if a woman’s time is worth nothing, and since most women work, their time is worth quite a bit.

A woman who is exclusively breastfeeding is a woman whose ability to work may be severely compromised. That’s not a problem if she has a spouse with a high paying job, but it’s definitely a problem for women whose families depend upon their income for food, clothing, rent, heat and medical care. Yes, formula costs money, but most working women can earn enough to pay for formula and have money left over to feed, clothe, house and provide medical care for other children as well.

4. Formula improves the lives of women.

The birth control pill, safe C-sections and infant formula have made feminism possible. Without them, women are at the mercy of biology. When women can easily control their own reproduction, easily survive childbearing, and aren’t forced to choose between children and education/employment, the quality and length of their lives rise dramatically.

Breastfeeding is still an excellent source of nutrition for infants, but it is beneficial ONLY for women who can successfully breastfeed and want to breastfeed. Formula is an excellent source of infant nutrition that has several additional benefits. Formula can save the lives of babies who might starve to death on breastmilk; it improves the lives of women; and it often improves the lives of other children in the family as well.

Despite the incessant gabbling about the benefits of breastfeeding, infant formula saves far more lives in the US than breastmilk ever could.

If breastfeeding disappeared tomorrow, no one’s life would change appreciably. If formula disappeared tomorrow, tens of thousands of American babies would die each and every year.

Ironic, isn’t it?