Founder of La Leche League resigns over 'breastfeeding men'.

Marian Tompson says the organisation has become a 'travesty of her original intent'.

I know a little bit about being a ‘founder’ of something. In 2012, I established a network of meet ups for pregnant women, linked up by social media: The Positive Birth Movement (PBM) - an idea that snowballed rapidly into over 450 free to attend groups all over the world. I was partly inspired by my own experiences at another similar network, the breastfeeding support groups of La Leche League (LLL). Like The PBM, LLL brought women together in the same room to champion and support each other. Like the PBM, LLL was grassroots, with nobody involved making a profit or selling extra products or services. Like the PBM, LLL was a thing of beauty, an absolute oasis for women in need in a world which often tosses pregnant women and new mothers casually aside. And like the PBM, LLL is being destroyed by the falsehood that people can change their sex.

Today a letter from one of the founders of LLL, Marian Tompson, was circulated to members of the organisation, some of whom have passed it to me. Seven women founded La Leche League in 1954, and Marian Tompson was one of them.

Six of the seven LLL founders at the time of creation

As far as I know, only two of them are still alive, and Marian is the only one of those two who have remained actively involved in LLL. Now she has resigned, stating that the organisation has become ‘a travesty of her original intent’, by ‘subtly shifting to include men who…want to have the experience of breastfeeding’.

Here’s her letter in full: