A Woman Was Ordered to Stop Breastfeeding to Accommodate the Father's Visitation Rights

A woman in Virginia has been ordered by a judge “to make every effort to place the child on a feeding schedule and use a bottle” in order to accommodate the baby’s father’s visitation rights and schedule, the Washington Post reported this week. The order, originally issued at the end of November, is set to take effect this month.

Since Arleta Ramirez’s daughter was born last July, she’s been breastfed, which Ramirez says is in accordance with all guidance from her doctors. But the judge ordered that her daughter’s father, Mike Ridgway, must be permitted to visit the baby four days per week with overnight visits. Ramirez’s baby needs to be fed once an hour, and feeding time interferes with her ex’s visitation time, prompting the court order for Ramirez to stop breastfeeding.

This is somehow, apparently, something courts can just do.

The Post notes that “because most custody disputes are handled in state courts and don’t surface consistently in public records, there’s little paper trail” to show how common cases like Ramirez’s are. And consequently, there’s little data showing how frequently mothers like her may be ordered by courts to stop breastfeeding—regardless of what their babies may be used to and prefer, and regardless of someone’s choice and preference for their body. As writer Moira Donegan notes, the court order Ramirez faces “uses the law to coerce women into unchosen bodily, health, and family circumstances for the sake of men’s entitlements or whims.”

Stephanie Bodak Nicholson, president of La Leche League’s USA Council, told the Washington Post that she receives at least one call each year regarding breastfeeding-related legal issues in custody disputes. A prominent men’s rights legal group called “The Firm for Men” (incidentally, it doesn’t accept women clients) states on its website that it identifies what it calls breastfeeding “ploys” for women seeking custody as a major concern and recurring issue.

https://jezebel.com/a-woman-was-ordered-to-stop-breastfeeding-to-accommodat-1850065735

An ex-husband behaving like a child, an attorney who seems to be part of the MRA movement, and a judge who knows absolutely nothing about breastfeeding. What could possibly go wrong here?