A small Ohio success

In Reynoldsburg, Ohio just a couple of days ago, breastfeeding proponent Anna Swank was told by the manager of a gym that she couldn't breastfeed her infant son Levi in the children's nursery portion of the facility.

Swank knew that a recently passed Ohio law assures her son's right to nurse in "places of public accommodation" anywhere his mother is allowed to be. But the gym's manager insisted the facility was private property, and therefore exempt from requirements of the law. Swank reached out for help in understanding how and where the law applied. She asked the Topfree Equal Rights Association (TERA), and the Naturist Action Committee collaborated with TERA on a response.

Ohio has no general state law proscribing the public exposure of female breasts. The state's new breastfeeding law came about as a result of Senate Bill 41, which NAC tracked carefully during the 2005 legislative session. The provisions of the law do, of course, apply to places like gyms that sell memberships to the public.

NAC and TERA may have helped in a minor way, but mostly, Swank took responsibility for herself. She ferreted out the names and e-mail addresses of those in positions of corporate responsibility for the gym, and she fired off focused and confident messages to each. In less than a day, she was rewarded with a letter from the president of the corporation that owns the gym in Reynoldsburg. The letter confirmed what Swank had already known. She's free to feed her child anywhere in the gym she's entitled to be. Including the nursery.

It's a success story. See it in Anna Swank's own words here. And here.