Kerala: Rape victim need not feed her baby

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Finally, it has been decided that mothers need not feed babies born out of rape. An order to this effect has been issued by the State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights. The state project director of Mahila Samakhya Society, which runs eight Nirbhaya homes in the state, had filed a petition before the Commission in protest against rape victims being forced to breastfeed their babies.

Seven inmates in these homes had delivered in the last year and five are on the verge of giving birth, the petition had said. The Commission, after intense deliberations with experts, found that victims of sexual abuse tend to surrender their children for adoption. “If the victim wants to surrender her newborn, she should not be asked to breastfeed,” the Commission said in its order. It said that “expressed milk” should be given to the newborn, that too “only if the mother shows interest.”

The Commission argued that when the victim is made to breastfeed, she forms an emotional bond with the child. “After this, to surrender the child would be heart rending for the mother. Things will get irremediably complex,” the Commission said.

The decision is also based on the realisation that it is anyway not possible for the child to live with the mother in future as most of these rape victims are minors. There are also innumerable cases where the violators are close relatives, including fathers. Though the Commission seems to have given prominence to the victim’s emotional health, it was not fully blind to the rights of the neworn.

The Commission acknowledged the importance of mother’s milk for a child. “The child requires breast milk because the colostrum contained in the feed is necessary for the growth of the child,” the Commission said. So to ensure safe mother’s milk, the Commission puts forward the concept of ‘human milk bank’.

Very loosely, a human milk bank is a safe deposit of sorts of human milk donated by nursing mothers who are not biologically related to the recipient infant. The Commission has asked the SAT superintendent to work out the creation of such a bank.