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The scenarios you stated are not illegal. Having a child under two out of the car seat while the car is in motion is illegal in her state.
Exactly. It's not about endangerment, its about the law. The purpose of the arrest and prosecution was not to protect the child, it was to trasnfer $1,950 from the woman to the department of revenue. Collecting the revenue is the primary job of the police.
Why do people keep saying this? The courts have ruled over and over again that driving is a protected constitutional right. It has been ruled so many times, that the issue doesn't even come up any more. This has been unchallenged settled law since the FDR administration.
Like any right, such as voting or speech or gun ownership, an individual can lose the right through judicial process where it is shown to be in the interest of public safety or public order. But no person can be arbitrarily denied the right to drive, vote, speak or bear arms.
A person has a right to move about from place to place, and may use any conveyance of his choice, except to a degree that such conveyance is regulated on the pubic roadways.
Proof please.
Besides: one's license can be suspended/revoked.............i.e. a elderly driver, one with certain medical conditions, etc.
Besides: one's license can be suspended/revoked.............i.e. a elderly driver, one with certain medical conditions, etc.
CASE #1: "The use of the highway for the purpose of travel and transportation is not a mere privilege, but a common fundamental right of which the public and individuals cannot rightfully be deprived." Chicago Motor Coach v. Chicago, 169 NE 221.
CASE #2: "The right of the citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, either by carriage or by automobile, is not a mere privilege which a city may prohibit or permit at will, but a common law right which he has under the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Thompson v. Smith, 154 SE 579.
I already stated that constitutionally protected rights can be abridged in specific cases, with due process, or regulated, where there is a compelling public interest.
A concerned citizen called police when he spotted a woman breastfeeding her infant while driving. The mom is facing up to 180 days in jail plus fines of up to $1,950 if convicted on charges of child endangerment and unlawfully restraining her child.
So...
1. Thoughts on the fact the driver called the police? Would you have called the police?
2. Should she be fined or what action, if any, should be taken?
My initial reaction was horror that someone had called the police - the civil rights aspect of it. If you spank your child in public you risk arrest, the child being taken away from you and placed in foster care, etc. .. now a mom is charged for breastfeeding while driving! (OK, not the smartest thing but worthy of police action?)
On the flip side, and especially after reading more about the circumstances (such as she was also on a cell phone and had other children in the car), it appears she was endangering her child as well as other drivers.
Gosh, when my oldest was young, car seats were basically nothing but booster seats and a lot of cars didn't even have seat belts. How did anyone survive?
What I would have done is tell her that if she does not stop doing so I would call the police for them to decide whether she should be arrested or not for endangering her child. At that point the ball is in their court.
It is not so much about breasfeeding. My wife breastfed our two youngest children and we encourage it. The point to me is the unsafe act.
Tough call for me personally because breastfeeding isn't wrong but while you're driving??? Come on. I don't know that I would have called the police, it would have taken me awhile to get over the shock but honestly, she is endangering herself, her children and other drivers.
It seems some are thinking there is an objection to breastfeeding !
The objection is the fact that she was doing it while she was driving!
I am having a problem understanding the ones with the first way of thinking!!!!
I do not see anyone here objecting to breastfeeding!
If I had been the cop, and if my department allowed me any common sense leeway on the beat, I would have given her a warning. I would have explained that there is a law that requires child restraint, and breast feeding does not exempt her from compliance. Issuing such a warning would have gone a long way toward minimizing the child endangerment in the future. Most people offend because they think they will not be caught, and disabusing them of that notion is a strong deterrent.
I would have thought there would an even greater child endangerment to take the mother away from a breastfeeding child for six months in the county jail, or to take $2,000 out of the family budget which could have been used to provide the child a more enriched environment in which to be reared, or to generate a high degree of anger and hatred against the police and authority in the child's mother, which would psychologically to the disadvantage of the child.
I really have a lot of concern about how many people in this country think the best thing we can do for our children is to imprison their parents on the most trivial of pretexts and impose draconian fines on their households and engender a hatred and distrust of authority. Or make the children the victims of do-gooder tattle-tales.
We have just generated one more hater in a world where there are already too many, and she has children to raise. Where will it end?
A concerned citizen called police when he spotted a woman breastfeeding her infant while driving. The mom is facing up to 180 days in jail plus fines of up to $1,950 if convicted on charges of child endangerment and unlawfully restraining her child.
So...
1. Thoughts on the fact the driver called the police? Would you have called the police?
2. Should she be fined or what action, if any, should be taken?
My initial reaction was horror that someone had called the police - the civil rights aspect of it. If you spank your child in public you risk arrest, the child being taken away from you and placed in foster care, etc. .. now a mom is charged for breastfeeding while driving! (OK, not the smartest thing but worthy of police action?)
On the flip side, and especially after reading more about the circumstances (such as she was also on a cell phone and had other children in the car), it appears she was endangering her child as well as other drivers.
Gosh, when my oldest was young, car seats were basically nothing but booster seats and a lot of cars didn't even have seat belts. How did anyone survive?
The punishment is obviously way overboard . SHe should be reprimanded in some way however. Financially is enough. Mothers doing this while driving or at a restaurant or public place where shes exposing her breast(s) is not right . There is supposed to be decency with how we present our bodies in public including being covered up and not exposed. But in this inconsiderate and moral-LESS society, anything is permissable if you FEEL like doing it. Freedom-twisting to help justify immorality or sense-less behaviour has become Americas great shame.
Last edited by RVlover; 09-11-2009 at 01:48 PM..
Reason: added
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