The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Breastmilk Lube

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Some of you might remember this post, about the med student who was suing to get the Medical Examiners Board to allow her time to pump breast milk during her exams.

Well, guess what. The first judge ruled against her, it's now been overturned, and the MEB is planning to appeal. At this rate, the baby will of course be in med school herself by the time it's all over, but with luck the latest judge's ruling will stand.

As he put it,
Judge Gary Katzmann said yesterday that she needed the extra time so she could be on “equal footing” with men and nonlactating women taking the test.
That's it exactly. The judge goes on to explain, for those who don't get how intuitively obvious that statement is, that
refusing to allow additional time meant that Ms. Currier must choose to either “use her break time to incompletely express breast milk and ignore her bodily functions, or abdicate her decision to express breast milk, resulting in significant pain.”

“Under either avenue,” he wrote, Ms. Currier “is placed at significant disadvantage in comparison to her peers.”
In other words, it's not about the baby, it's not about being a mommy, it's not about whining, it's not about wanting special privileges.

It's about a bodily function. Which, by the grace of god, Cthulhu, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the impersonal forces of evolution and sexual reproduction, is one that women have and men don't, and that may women never experience.

But those that do are still human beings, with the same right to equal treatment as everyone else. Failing to accommodate them is akin to failing to accommodate people's needs to pee, or eat, or fulfull ay other necessary bodily function.

The only difference is that this bodily function belongs to women. If it didn't, every public building and office in the developed world would have nursing rooms.

Don't even get Bitch_PhD started about the lack of changing tables in a lot of public buildings and in men's rooms. Though this has started getting better since significant numbers of men started taking care of babies, too. Go figure.

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