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Express YourselvesWhy all the silence around the breast-feeding test-taker?

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Friday, Sept. 28, 2007, at 6:31 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

It's also easy to lump Currier in with the pants judge, the God-suer, and the coffee-spillers, all of whom race off to court the instant they are thwarted. But Currier's decision to sue, and her ADHD, and her appearances on morning TV, actually have nothing to do with the real question: Why shouldn't she get extra time to pump? Don't nursing women deserve equal opportunities to be certified?

The National Board of Medical Examiners has just appealed Judge Katzmann's ruling. "If we are variable in the time that's allotted to trainees, we alter the performance of the examination," board spokeswoman Dr. Ruth Hoppe has said. One of the things the boards test for is how one deals in a time-crunch situation. And giving test-takers who don't suffer from disabilities as defined under the ADA extra time harms other test takers.

I find it hard to fathom what difference a few extra moments spent pumping would really make. I find it doubly hard to grasp why the medical establishment wouldn't bend their rules to accommodate two undeniably important public health values: breast-feeding, and increasing the numbers of women in the profession.

The lack of support for Currier from other working moms must stem at least somewhat from the fact that we sucked it up and pumped in airplane bathrooms, dirty gas stations, and judicial confirmation hearings. Why does she get to make a fuss about it?

I also can't quite shake the sense that some of my stay-at-home friends are finding it hard to get behind Currier because, well, what the heck is she thinking trying to pass the medical boards with two small kids at home?

One final possibility for our collective ambivalence about a Harvard-educated doctor trying to raise two kids and work at the same time: I wonder if the illusion of the Mommy Wars has cowed us all into silence, into believing that if we don't express ourselves on this subject, we can avoid another round of girl-on-girl nastiness in the public sphere.

But here's another way to think of it: If we can't stand up for a woman with a brilliant career who is fighting to care for her babies as she chooses—values we ostensibly all share—you really have to wonder if we can stand up for anyone at all.

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Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Photograph of Sophie Currier and her daughter Lea by Stephan Savoia/Associated Press. Photograph of nursing baby on Slate's home page by George Doyle/Getty Images.
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