Posted on 06/19/2003 7:36:03 PM PDT by mhking
Edited on 06/23/2003 2:48:15 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
PORTAGE COUNTY -- A mother traveling from Detroit to Pittsburgh got into trouble in Portage County while trying to drive and breastfeed her baby at the same time.
Twenty-nine-year-old Catherine Donkers had fed the baby before she left Detroit but said her seven-month-old daughter was hungry again.
"I knew I was doing nothing wrong when I was breastfeeding her," Donkers said.
Donkers doesn't consider her actions excessively dangerous.
"I think there are lots of things we do when we put ourselves at risk, just by the very fact that I'm in a car and there's lots of car accidents every single day," she said. "I think it would be reasonable to say even that's a danger."
A truck driver apparently saw it as a danger and called the highway patrol. But Donkers wouldn't pull over for police until she got to a tollbooth.
"I've directed her to, that when she doesn't feel safe, she goes to a public place," said her husband, Brad Barnhill.
At the tollbooth, Donkers didn't give the trooper a driver's license. She instead pulled out an affidavit as identification and got cited for not having a license.
The couple also claims she did nothing wrong, saying Michigan law has an exemption to its child restraint law for nursing mothers.
They claim that since the turnpike is an interstate, drivers can follow the laws of their home state. But the highway patrol says that as long as the stop occurred in Ohio, they have to abide by Ohio laws.
The couple has done extensive research on the law and believes in a strict adherence to them. Donkers is facing child endangering and child seat violations among other charges. Her and her husband say they plan to fight all charges and will file a counter suit.
Why would the victim be the one to pick up an expert witness in a prosecution? That's the responsibility of the prosecutor.
I'd like to teach the World to sing.
Put on the flame-proof suit!
I live in Minnesota. It is the third coldest place on earth behind the Baffin Islands and the territory behind Hillary's G-String.
It is 78 degrees and sunny.
I am inside.
I look like Edgar Winter's pale brother Johnny.
What to do? LOL
Just wanted to say hello friend.
I would hope the Mom took a life lesson of luck from this.
Xena, I pull over and stop every 10 miles or so. I've been doing it for 20 years. When I lactate, I'm going to be responsible.
Exactly. My proposal is that every nursing mother feed her child while enagaging in a high speed police chase.
Or ... perhaps we can run the next race at Talledaga with 31 nursing mothers.
Sorry, but I was the FIRST to say that our B-2 2K bunker busting bomb attacks would have been more accurate and focused with a woman pilot giving milk to a baby on her open teat.
Being right all the time is not as groovy as it seems. I have no-one to envy. I envy you for envying me. I think I stole that from "The Critic."
The people here are Howlin because she didn't pull over immediately. Naturally, they missed the part of the story her husband told where SHE'D BEEN RAPED ON TWO SEPERATE OCCASIONS BY POLICE OFFICERS, ONE OF WHOM WAS ON TRIAL!!
Dan, because you're such a stickler for accuracy, I'm sure you don't mind this gentle correction.
According to this post, she was not on her way to pick up an expert witness that was going to testify at a trial.
She was on her way to Michigan to a symposium of forensic toxicologists. She needed an expert witness in the case she is pursuing against the last rapist. She had to get there on time, or miss the opportunity
In actuality, she was on her way to symposium of forensic toxicologists, looking for someone to become an expert witness. You also make the claim that one of the police officers is on trial. His statement says "a case," not a trial. In this instance, because she's looking for an expert witness, and in criminal trials, the responsibility for obtaining an expert witness falls to the state (prosecutor, state's attorney, district attorney), as well as paying for the expert's witness fees and transportation and other expenses and not the responsibility of the victim, this is more likely a civil case, with the trial still pending.
In this post, he doesn't say she's been raped on two separate occasions. It states that she has been assaulted twice by the police: assaulted, not sexually assaulted. The word "assault" can also mean that she was touched, slapped, hit, kicked, punched or another similar action. In the above post, he claims she was raped. There is a claim that she was raped at gunpoint while she attended the US Naval Academy. Later, of course, he becomes more expansive and dramatic and makes the rape claim, but doesn't say who the rapist is or who they're suing. It's unclear whether she's been raped once, twice or three times.
Finally, I know that this woman has been assaulted twice by the police. I know that she has been raped at gunpoint while she attended the US Naval Academy. She does not pull over until she gets to a safe place with witnesses.
To me, this says that the fact that a person's behavior violates this section shall not be construed as evidence, prima facie or otherwise, that the person's action constitutes negligence. It does not say that actions which happen to violate this section cannot be viewed as being negligent if they would be so viewed if this act didn't exist.
To give a more extreme example, suppose the baby were crawling around the floor near the control pedals. Would allowing the baby to roam around like that be considered negligent or recklessness, or would this act be construed to declare that someone who has a child improperly restrained in a car cannot possibly be found negligent or reckless for anything having to do with their child's lack of restraint?
She was not, read post #609.
When I was nursing, I'd dream about Snickers bars. I could smell the chocolate in my sleep. I just craved chocolate, probably because I consider it a major food group AND I was denied. As for lima beans, BLECH.
And those so-called "principles" would be..? Reckless endangerment?
"I load a revolver with one cartridge, spin the cylinder, and aim it at my family and pull the trigger. They haven't been hurt, so there's no problem." That kind of so-called "no harm, no foul" mentality is uncivilized at best and a mortal threat to others at worst. Society has the right and obligation to defend itself against reckless irresponsible people.
If you don't like society's decisions, then you're more than welcome to 1) get them changed through the democratic process we have in our Republic or 2) move to another society more to your liking. I hear that recklessness and irresponsibility is big in Lebanon and Somalia and Peshawar. Do you want to make America into that?
But not: responsibility as it applies to others' lives.
Numbers 1 and 2 would be fine with me if we were living in a society much like we had 200 years ago. But number 3 needs to be brought to bear when living in a society as we have structured these days. A motor vehicle can be a dangerous weapon and needs to be handled with care and responsibility. This woman was not thinking of her responsibility to others while she was behind the wheel and needs to be reminded of that. Vociferously and severely.
I agree. Nothing I can add. BTW, I've forwarded (and pinged) this thread to David Gold.
A fool who play russian roulette is (1) committing suicide (with some chance of being unsucessful) and (2) leaving a mess for others to clean up (also with some chance there is no mess)
There is as much comparison between the two actions, as say, your own decision to eat at a restaurant and anothers to swallow arsenic. You don't know if someone at that restaurant hasn't spit in your food, nor if they haven't dumped arsenic in it.
Just a few weeks back some folks made the awfully dangerous and risky decision to attend a church social in Maine and drink the coffee. Verty bad choice. Hang 'em! Or so your analogy might have it. For someone did lace the coffee with poison. ANd those who got poisoned had made a choice to *horrors* "eat out".
It only took 544 posts for somebody to get to the point.
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