Category: Reproductive Rights

Moob Juice is Child Abuse – protesting men who ‘breastfeed’ for kicks -Lily Maynard

The dairy industry informs the UK consumer that there is exciting news! The latest scientific advances mean they can artificially induce lactation in bulls using a cocktail of hormones and chemicals! It’s great! This ‘bovine milk’ is put on the market and sold to the public as the real thing, kosher, bona fide, JUST AS GOOD. Would the public buy it?

Of course not. Putting aside the fact that dairy cows, unlike human women, are already pumped full of hormones to keep them lactating, nobody would want to drink bull ‘milk’ because it’s so blindingly obvious that it is both wrong and unnecessary. As for being ‘just as good’, I just don’t buy it. And neither would you.

Incidentally, ‘milking the bull’ is an old-fashioned saying which uses the metaphor to indicate “an activity or enterprise that has no chance of succeeding; to do something pointless and futile.”

In short, there are no properly medically controlled or documented studies concerning ‘moob juice’, although there is enough anecdotal evidence, and a few rather patchy records and reports that suggest that it can contain sustenance in some form or another.

What about the colostrum, so important to the first few days of a breastfed baby’s life? What about the changing consistency of breastmilk that is so essential to a breastfed newborn’s development?

Even if moob juice can provide nutritional content, how can it be measured with just one – or two, or three- assessments? Can moob juice offer parental immunities and benefits? And if this cocktail is so effective, easy and harmless a treatment, why is it not being offered to more women who have problems breastfeeding?

Source: Moob Juice is Child Abuse – protesting men who ‘breastfeed’ for kicks -Lily Maynard

MeToo Family Courts

Are you are victim of systemic abuse and institutional  failure in the federal and family court systems?

This Class Action involves a plaintiff (known as the representative plaintiff or lead litigant) pursuing a claim on behalf of a larger group that has been similarly affected. They are the only persons assuming the risk and cost of the litigation, and they are running their claim in the interests of all affected parties within the defined group.

This Class Action has 3 Objectives:

Formal Apology

Obtain a formal government apology and acknowledgement for the harm family and federal courts have caused to children and families, recognizing the impact on a generation and paving the way for healing and justice.

Compensation

Financial and other compensation for harm and economic loss to redress and support affected individuals and children who have been victims of systemic abuse and institutional  failure in the federal and family court systems.

Judicial Accountability

The immediate establishment of an independent Federal Judicial Commission with community representation and measures to deal with systemic bias and collusion.

Source: MeTooFamilyCourts

A child’s fertility pact – by Bernard Lane

A primary school-age girl, Isla1, offered one of her eggs for future harvest so that her elder sister, Mia, who identifies as a boy, could one day have a child if she is sterilised by transgender hormone treatment, a court in Australia has heard.

“It’s like a pact between them,” the court was told by parent A2, who supports their eldest daughter’s wish for puberty blockers and testosterone; Mia has also expressed a wish to undergo “every surgery available.”

The Federal Circuit and Family Court this week has been hearing a case in which the separated parents—whose personal characteristics have been suppressed by order of Justice Peter Tree—disagree on whether “gender-affirming” medical treatment or mental health intervention should be the focus in serving the best interests of the gender-diverse sisters.

Parent A, who lives with the daughters, seeks an order for sole parental responsibility, which would enable Mia, who had begun high school at the time of the fertility pact, to continue down a path towards hormonal interventions with irreversible effects including a risk of permanent infertility.

Parent B, who regards Mia’s trans identification as a phase and favours a child’s acceptance of the body over gender medicalisation, is seeking shared responsibility and orders stopping the pursuit of hormonal treatment.

Source: A child’s fertility pact – by Bernard Lane

Abortions were illegal in Australia in the 1930s, and many women like Isabel Pepper died getting them – ABC News

Until the late 1960s, abortion was illegal in Australia. With limited access to contraception, many women, like my great-grandmother, unlawfully attempted to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

According to The Royal Women’s Hospital records from the 1930s, about 250 women each year presented with a septic abortion. This equates to five admissions each week to that one hospital.

“It’s a situation for the desperate,” registered nurse, midwife and historian, Madonna Grehan says.

According to the inquest, Isabel had repeatedly attempted to abort the pregnancy herself. When these home methods were unsuccessful, she sought the assistance of a backyard abortionist.

But there were clearly complications.

Once at the hospital, Isabel was quickly admitted to ward one, the septic ward.

“Ward one was a ward that collected women with lots of problems,” Ms Mabbitt explains.

Now in her 90s, the former midwife still has vivid memories of caring for women with septic abortions on ward one.

“It’s the distinctive smell, it’s all-encompassing. And the screaming. They were in so much pain from everything shutting down,” she says.

Despite the pain Isabel would undoubtedly have been suffering, she was interviewed by police within hours of her admission to hospital because of the illegality of abortion.

She told police that she had miscarried.

“She really didn’t give any indication of the truth, and that was normal,” Ms Mabbitt says.

Just 24 hours after she was admitted to hospital, Isabel died at 5.15am on August 21, 1937.

For decades, thousands of Australian women found themselves in equally desperate situations and they died as a result.

“What really irritates me, most of the people who are against abortion are men, and they really have no idea what they’re talking about, no idea how women died.”

Source: Abortions were illegal in Australia in the 1930s, and many women like Isabel Pepper died getting them – ABC News

Superannuation will be added to Paid Parental Leave scheme | The Australian

Mums and dads will receive superannuation on top of government-funded paid parental leave payments, in a major spending commitment ahead of the May budget aimed at bolstering Labor’s gender equity credentials.

Women’s Minister Katy Gallagher will on Thursday unveil a plan to increase the nearly $900 a week payment by 12 per cent, which will go into superannuation accounts for the 180,000 parents who access the scheme every year.

Senator Gallagher said the measure would “close the super gap”, with men generally retiring with about 25 per cent more superannuation than women.

The announcement comes almost a year after the government’s Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce recommended it take “urgent” action to add super to PPL, which Senator Gallagher said she was actively considering ahead of the May 2023 budget.

Source: Superannuation will be added to Paid Parental Leave scheme | The Australian

A child of a surrogate mother, now a fighter against the industry

Something was just wrong, but Olivia Maurel did not know what. Until she found out that her parents paid for her. She found her biological mother after a long search.

Olivia Maurel always knew something was “off” about her birth. The secretive behaviour of her mother made it clear to her: the woman who raised her did not give birth to her. “There were no pictures of my pregnant mother, and I am five days old in the first pictures of me.”

Despite the DNA test and recognition of her biological mother, Maurel is officially a child of the parents she grew up with. Immediately after her birth, her birth certificate was sealed, and she was given a new one. There, her intended parents are listed as biological parents, allowing them to take little Olivia to France. “Swapping birth certificates should be completely illegal when you think of it.”

Maurel’s parents came into contact with her biological mother in the early nineties through a surrogacy agency. Because of the age of her intended mother, surrogacy was the only option left.

All these question marks over her head caused Maurel psychological problems, she says. She fears rejection and has difficulties in her relationships with older women. Apart from that, she has bipolar disorder, giving her depressive episodes. However, that is not because she was born from surrogacy, Maurel warns. “I inherited it from my biological mother, who is not mentally stable. The surrogacy agency should have rejected her because of that, but they did not.”

Maurel is still in touch with the family that raised her and her biological family. However, she is convinced that surrogacy is a bad thing. The births of her children, now aged between two and five, made her even more determined to fight against surrogacy. “I was so scared during my pregnancies because I did not know 25 per cent of my children’s genes. I did not know what medical issues I could transfer to them.”

Source: A child of a surrogate mother, now a fighter against the industry

CANADA: HIV Positive Trans-Identified Male Boasts of ‘Breastfeeding’ Infant with Professional Support

A trans-identified male residing in Canada who claims to be HIV positive and inserts progesterone rectally has been allegedly “breastfeeding” his child with the support of established medical clinics. Former men’s rights activist Murray Pearson, 52, who uses the name Margaret (Margie) Fancypants on social media, has been criticized after he shared an image of himself at a lactation clinic holding a young infant.

Disturbingly, Pearson has also revealed that he is HIV positive and is aware that the deadly virus can be transmitted through breastfeeding.

In a shocking display of further disregard for the child’s health, Pearson speculated as to whether his experiment would qualify him as a candidate for the participation in academic research.

Reduxx reached out to Dr. Klein to request information on her involvement in Pearson’s experimental lactation, and she confirmed that she had been monitoring Pearson for his HIV infection at the Chronic Viral Illness Service of the McGill University Health Centre.

Dr. Klein further states that Pearson had expressed a desire to breastfeed and then had been referred to an endocrinologist.

Prior to identifying as transgender, Pearson was involved in politically advocating for the US-based, anti-feminist men’s rights non-profit A Voice for Men (AVFM).

The organization was founded in 2009 by Paul Elam, who has said that there would no longer be “any place to hide on the internet” for “lying bitches,” and members associated with the group have previously published personal information about women who opposed their activities.

Criticism of Pearson’s claims to be “lactating” and “breastfeeding” have focused on concerns that he is “motivated… to experience sexual arousal from lactation” . . .

This is not the first controversy that has involved trans-identified males breastfeeding babies, with a number of recent examples triggering concern over the past year.

Last year, a lactation professional in Australia along with a women’s rights campaigner were warned that they had broken the law after criticizing a trans-identified male who had boasted of breastfeeding his infant. Shortly after, a trans-identified male in the UK dismissed critics of the practice as “transphobes” after he posted images of himself with a baby latched to his nipple.

Source: CANADA: HIV Positive Trans-Identified Male Boasts of ‘Breastfeeding’ Infant with Professional Support

For the BBC, sorry seems to be the hardest word | Milli Hill

On Tuesday I wrote a post that has since had 20 thousand views and caused a bit of a storm. The post was a response to a BBC News item on Monday night in which the presenter Rajini Vaidyanathan claimed that, according to the NHS, the World Health Organisation (WHO), and numerous studies, ‘transgender women’s milk is just as good for babies as breastmilk’. Vaidyanathan’s guest, a woman completely unqualified in the area of breastfeeding, Kate Luxion, not only supported this claim but built on it, stating that male ‘milk’ was not just equivalent to, but potentially of ‘higher quality’, than women’s.

To summarise my findings:

  • All of the news coverage came from one letter written by an NHS medical director, now no longer in post.
  • Nowhere has it been stated that this letter represents the position of the NHS itself.
  • The WHO guidance that the letter refers to concerns the benefits of women breastfeeding over formula milk and is not about induced lactation.
  • The letter refers to five academic studies that support induced lactation but four out of five of these studies are on females.
  • The BBC referred to ‘one case found what it called no observable effects in babies fed by induced lactation’. This study was in fact into the effects of a female person taking testosterone whilst breastfeeding.
  • The one study in the NHS letter that was into male ‘milk’ was a case study of a single male. (more on this in a moment)
  • This was the same study that Kate Luxion suggested showed male milk was of ‘higher quality’. In fact, that study found the male ‘milk’ to have a higher fat content. This is not an indicator of quality.

But in spite of the huge numbers of people who have been reading and sharing my piece, the misinformation at the heart of the story has continued to be spread globally.

An article in ‘Futurism’, who I hoped might be a niche bunch but who in fact have 1.2 million instagram followers, went with:

As averse as I am to conspiracy theories, it’s been tempting at times to wonder if this misinformation is intentional. Why would the state broadcaster effectively rubber stamp this story, allowing false claims that males can breastfeed to be spread far and wide?

It is disheartening that no media outlet including the BBC has seen fit to correct this story, which is truly ‘fake news’.

Source: (3) For the BBC, sorry seems to be the hardest word

When trans rights trump babies’ rights | The Spectator

Over the weekend a letter came to light written recently by a Dr Rachael James in her role as medical director of Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. In this letter, Dr James insisted that the milk a man can sometimes induce is just as good for babies as their biological mother’s breast milk. They’re both ‘human milk’, says Dr James, and therefore ‘ideal food for infants’. She includes in her letter, by way of proof, a link to the WHO page on the subject of breastfeeding.

Dr James is engaging here in a truly ballsy bit of subterfuge. Yes, the WHO says that breast milk is best, but it’s referring only to ordinary breast milk produced by actual women. It makes no mention of man milk. But Dr James knows that. She’s a senior consultant in the NHS and there’s not a chance she doesn’t also know that the milk produced by a baby’s biological mother is by far its best bet. Unlike man milk, a mother’s milk at first contains colostrum, which has all the antibodies, antioxidants and nutrients a newborn needs and it changes magically, in response to the needs of a child. No man has ever produced colostrum, hard as he pumps, nor anything like enough milk to feed a baby.

But Dr James’s really unforgivable omission is not to mention that domperidone, the drug used to induce lactation, might well be unsafe for a child. Domperidone has not been licensed for use in America because of concerns that it causes heart problems. Trans activists can insist till they’re blue in the hair that the small amounts of domperidone in chest milk are unlikely to harm a baby, but they just don’t know.

In all studies cited, much is made of the ‘affirmation’ a trans woman (man) feels when he’s allowed to breastfeed. It helps with his dysphoria, we’re told. There must be some official NHS document that shows how to weigh the brief satisfaction of a trans woman against the possibility of lifelong harm to an infant. I’d love to see it.

On Monday night, the BBC chose to discuss the man-milk affair with a young woman called Kate Luxion, an unqualified ‘trainee lactation consultant’ and a researcher at UCL. With a composed and serious expression, Luxion insisted that not only was man milk safe, but ‘studies’ had actually found that a trans woman’s milk contained more nutrients than the milk of a baby’s mother.
The BBC didn’t think it necessary to quiz the trainee consultant, to examine the study she cited or to ask how it could possibly be true that trans milk is actually suddenly more nutritious than the milk from a biological mother. Neither the babies nor the truth matter any more.

Source: When trans rights trump babies’ rights | The Spectator