An American co-founder of the world’s oldest breastfeeding support charity denounced the organization as a “travesty” and resigned after staffers included male lactation into its services. Marian Tompson, 94, said La Leche League International, founded in the United States in 1956 to support young mothers who want to breastfeed their newborns, is an “organization that has become a travesty (of her) original intent.” She condemned La Leche for “indulging the fantasies of adults” — biological males who identify as women and therefore wish to have the “experience” of breastfeeding. .“From an organization with the specific mission of supporting biological women who want to give their babies the best start in life by breastfeeding them, LLL’s focus has subtly shifted to include men who, for whatever reason, want to have the experience of breastfeeding, despite no careful long-term research on male lactation and how that may affect the baby,” wrote Tompson in her scathing resignation letter addressed to senior board members, according to the Daily Mail. “This shift from following the norms of nature, which is the core of mothering through breastfeeding, to indulging the fantasies of adults, is destroying our organization.”Prior to her resignation, Tompson said she had petitioned the board to drop its ideological approach, but it was to no avail — “(there’s) nothing I can do,” she said. .Yet, Tompson, who was the foundation’s president for 24 years up until 1980, hopes LLL will renounce its ideological gender agenda and return to its “original mission and purpose” — supporting biological women. If that is the case, she will return, she said. Earlier this year, the UK arm of LLL underwent a dispute regarding its “trans inclusive policy,” where the Charity Commission regulator had to step in to mediate. “I do not recognize LLL in the bullying, lies, and cruelty of recent times and this has been unreasonably hard to endure,” said the Great Britain branch’s Miriam Main before she resigned over the matter. In response to news of Tompson’s resignation letter, Helen Joyce of the UK-based women’s rights charity Sex Matters said, “The situation at La Leche League is one of the starkest examples of how gender-identity ideology turns organizations upside-down.” “By including men who want to breastfeed in its services, LLL is destroying its founding mission to support breastfeeding mothers,” said Joyce, per the Mail. “It also goes against the wishes of many mothers, group leaders and trustees around the world, who have been fighting to convince LLL International to hold fast to its woman-focused mission, including here in the UK."
