The social networking site called Facebook has found itself stuck in the middle of an age old debate of whether breastfeeding in public is acceptable. Some say no and some disagree. However, Facebook has shown what it believes to be right by taking down pictures of breastfeeding posted by its members. They even went so far as to ban a user, Kelli Roman, for posting a picture of herself breastfeeding her baby. The company says that it violates its terms and conditions and the picture was of an obscene nature.
Facebook has said that any photos that violate the terms of use for their site will be taken down and the photos of breastfeeding they have removed so far violates those terms because it is exposure of a whole breast.
They also claim that the photos they remove are brought to their attention and complained about from other users of then network. As long as the photos do not violate the terms of use they will not be removed. Facebook says that they are not against breastfeeding and they consider it to be a beautiful and natural thing.
In response, another social network group was created call “Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is Not Obscene”, which now has over 10,000 members. This group is also planning on staging the first virtual protest to ever occur on December 27th of this year.
The protest to take place is asking that the users of Facebook who breastfeed to post a picture of breastfeeding as their profile picture and if possible to show up at the Facebook headquarters to protest the removal of these pictures. Their point is that if it has been deemed acceptable for women to breastfeed in public then it should be no different regarding the internet. They feel that Facebook is sending the wrong message to mothers when they remove these pictures, saying that breastfeeding in view of others is wrong.
A similar protest took place at an Applebees restaurant when a nursing mother was asked by a waitress to cover up while she was breastfeeding.
Another act of protest against Facebook was started by the Nursing Advocates Group site that has posted over 3,000 videos of women breastfeeding and 10,000 wall comments which has spiraled into more then 1,500 discussions.
Only time will tell if the continued use of protests will in fact have any effect.
This has been a long debate in the United States and in 1848 the Right to Breastfeed Act, H.R. was put into effect. In 1999, it was actually put into law that women have the right to breastfeed on federal property. There are many states across the county that have their own laws permitting the public act of breastfeeding.
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