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    Woman to Promote Breast-Feeding
    The Associated Press

    Thursday 30 August 2007

    Lexington, Kentucky - A Lexington woman is launching a campaign promoting breast-feeding after a recent confrontation over nursing her infant at a local Applebee's restaurant.

    "I want breast-feeding to be accepted," Brooke Ryan, 34, told The Lexington Herald-Leader.

    As part of her campaign, Ryan is organizing a "Nurse Out" on Sept. 8 with posters and breast-feeding outside the Applebee's in Lexington where she was confronted. She's also asking for a public apology from Applebee's and training for its employees about the rights of breast-feeding mothers.

    "I'm not trying to be provocative," she said. "I want to teach."

    On June 14, Ryan said she sat down for lunch with her children, picking a booth in the back of the restaurant, away from other customers, where she discreetly nursed her 7-month-old son, Michael.

    A waitress asked Ryan to cover up with a blanket, though Ryan said it was too hot to carry one. After the waitress repeated her request, Ryan asked to see the manager and handed him a copy of the 2006 Kentucky law prohibiting interference with mothers breast-feeding in public.

    Thirty-nine states, including Kentucky, allow women to breast-feed in any public or private location.

    Ryan said the manager told her he was aware of the law, but that customers were complaining about indecent exposure. He too asked her to cover up with a blanket.

    Ryan left as her food came to nurse her baby in the car.

    Her lawyer sent two letters to Thomas and King, the company that operates Applebee's in central Kentucky. A company attorney responded that the chain would consider keeping blankets in the restaurant so that breast-feeding women could cover themselves.

    "That's like telling Rosa Parks she still had to sit in the back of the bus, but we'll give her a blanket to make her more comfortable," Ryan said.

    Thomas and King President Mike Scanlon told the newspaper that he didn't know about the incident, though he said Applebee's had no policy against breast-feeding.

    "It is perfectly legal to breast-feed in public and we support that," Scanlon said, adding that the manager didn't intend to interfere with Ryan's breast-feeding but requested that she "do it modestly, which I believe is an appropriate response."

    Ryan said that as an experienced breast-feeder, she is extremely modest, and, in that instance, made sure that she was facing into the corner.

    State Sen. Tom Buford, R-Nicholasville, who sponsored the breast-feeding protection bill, said Ryan "was not treated right under the new law."

    "There should have been no comment made to her at all; the restaurant overstepped its boundaries."