Beth Winegarner's news articles

by Beth Winegarner
Special to the Examiner
January 29, 2012

Rita Kearns lies back as her midwife measures her gravid belly. Maria Iorillo presses a fetoscope to Kearns’ side and finds the baby’s heartbeat. “It’s perfect,” she says, passing Kearns the earpieces.

Kearns, 43, is 41 weeks pregnant — one week past her due date. By now, many obstetricians would suggest inducing labor. Iorillo is content to wait. And, when the contractions begin, Kearns will give birth at home, as she’s done twice before.

She is one of a growing number of area women choosing to give birth at home. Local home births have doubled since 2005, even as overall births declined nearly 7 percent from 2007, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Many families choose home birth even though insurance companies frequently leave them holding the bag for some or all of the costs.

Families choose home birth for a variety of reasons, said midwife Michelle Welborn. Some fear hospitals and medical intervention. Others want a natural birth, or control of the birthing environment, Welborn said.

At hospitals, women often face doctors eager to accelerate labor, said Redwood City doula Sandra Caldwell. That can lead to complications, even Caesarean sections.

Others turn away from hospitals because they don’t appreciate rushed prenatal visits attended by a revolving-door cast of nurses and doctors. Gia Schultz, 30, was 22 and 30 weeks pregnant when she hired a midwife to deliver her son at home.

“Instantly knew I wanted her at my birth,” Schultz said. “She had an actual interest in getting to know us … our wants, needs and unique characteristics. In the hospital you didn’t have enough time for that.”

San Francisco’s midwives and home-birth supporters have worked hard to make The City a home-birth mecca.

They network through the Bay Area Homebirth Collective, offer birth classes and potlucks, and have fought to legalize home birth and encourage hospitals to embrace it.

When Iorillo came to San Francisco in 1985, it was illegal for her to deliver babies at home, despite her license from a renowned midwifery school. She served on the California Board of Midwives for 10 years, during which she saw two bills legalizing non-nurse midwives fail before the third passed in 1994.

Local midwives worked with UC San Francisco’s birth center to overcome the hostility many women faced when they told their obstetricians they were planning a home birth — hostility that often returned if they wound up transferring to a hospital during labor.

“We had doctors who think home birth isn’t safe, and I think the majority of doctors feel that way,” said Judith Bishop, a former home-birth midwife who now delivers babies at UCSF. “We wanted to make sure there isn’t a divisive feeling between hospital and home birth, that people don’t feel they’re treated badly for coming in, or that we treat them with less respect.”

When that happens, she added, women and midwives become reluctant to transfer, risking the health of both mother and child.

Now, the only San Francisco hospital where doctors may decline to accept home-birth transfers is the California Pacific Medical Center.

Spokesman Kevin McCormack said CPMC isn’t opposed to home births, but its obstetricians, who are independent practitioners, can choose not to back up patients planning home births. CPMC delivers nearly half the babies born here each year, and has a 29 percent C-section rate, just slightly lower than the state average of 32.8 percent.

California hospitals charge upward of $15,000 for an uncomplicated vaginal birth, and often $30,000 or more for a C-section. While health-insurance providers cover most or all of those costs, they routinely reimburse 50 percent or less for home birth, which costs just $4,000 to $6,000 — including all prenatal and postnatal care.

“It’s kind of amazing when you think about it,” Bishop said. “It would be so much cheaper for insurance companies not to pay the hospital bill, which is gigantic.”

Coverage for home birth varies depending on the insurance provider and the patient’s plan, noted Schultz, who now handles insurance billing for Rites of Passage Midwifery. Kaiser doesn’t cover anything. Others may pay anywhere from 20 to 50 percent — even 100 percent, if the stars align.

“The key is patience,” Schultz said. “Insurance companies always come back and say they won’t pay you; you have to go through the process of denial over and over.”

Susan Pisano, spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, a collective of 1,300 insurers, said the coverage issues relate to patient safety. “The bottom line,” she said, “is the evidence has been pretty sparse on the safety of home births.”

But according to a 2005 British Medical Journal study of 5,000 American births, home birth has similarly low rates of infant and maternal mortality as low-risk hospital births. Other studies have echoed these findings.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is beginning to soften. In October, it met with midwives for the first Home Birth Summit in Virginia. “Instead of all the backstabbing and trying to squelch us out of existence, they had an open conversation about where we can find consensus,” Iorillo said.

Natural-birth centers forced to close doors

Home births are increasingly popular, but the sagging economy has hit natural-birth advocates hard, leaving pregnant parents with fewer choices.

St. Luke’s Hospital closed its “Homestyle” program — which offered in-house midwives and a more natural birthing model — in 2007 to help keep the financially strapped hospital from closing. Earlier this year, Sage Femme, The City’s only independent birthing center, shuttered its Capp Street facility after reimbursements from Medi-Cal and other insurance providers shrank.

Natural Resources, the 24-year-old shop that provides classes, birth-tub rentals and supplies for natural-birth families, narrowly escaped the same fate in November when it raised $48,000 through crowd-sourcing.

“It started with the economy,” said Natural Resources owner Cara Vidano. “Over time, our revenue has decreased.

Even with cutting costs, we haven’t been able to pay all our bills.” After failing to find a buyer for the struggling store, Vidano faced two choices: raise donations or close.

Sage Femme and its head midwife, Judy Tinkelenberg, delivered hundreds of babies in their 12 years in the Mission district. Tinkelenberg was the only midwife in San Francisco to accept Medi-Cal. The average client paid $3,820 to $4,500 for a birth at Sage Femme, including all prenatal and post-natal care. Until recently, Medi-Cal would cover almost $2,000 of that, but in recent years, their reimbursement dropped to less than $1,200 per birth.

“And, if the patient transfers to a hospital” — which 5 to 40 percent of home-birth moms do, depending on the midwife — “I don’t get paid at all,” Tinkelenberg said. “If I had cut Medi-Cal I don’t know if it would have been made up for with paying patients.”

For both businesses, the community — not the health care industry — is what may keep birth options alive.

Tinkelenberg is now attending home births and working with the Alameda-based Birth Options Foundation to raise money for a new birth center somewhere in the Bay Area.

For Natural Resources, the influx of donations “means we will be able to function again,” Vidano said. “If everything goes as planned, we will be in business for a while. This isn’t just a short-term solution.”

This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.

Beth Winegarner
Examiner Staff Writer
September 20, 2008

The Recreation and Park Department knows that nearly 140 of its facilities are contaminated by lead, but it says a tight budget means it will be years before cleanup is completed.

City agencies are required by the Department of Public Health to remove lead from buildings constructed before 1978. Recreation and Park fell behind, and in 2003, the department was required to step up its efforts and report quarterly to the Board of Supervisors on its progress, said Karen Cohn, a children’s health manager at DPH.

At the same time, DPH lobbied for an annual allowance of $200,000 to help Recreation and Park continue cleanup. However, “$200,000 doesn’t really do anything,” Cohn said.

Since 1999, the department has slowly made progress, removing lead paint and other contamination at 149 sites — but it has another 136 to go.

Among those sites are many city landmarks, including the Palace of Fine Arts, the War Memorial Opera House, 16 public libraries and the 84-year-old Kezar Pavilion, according to a report from Recreation and Park General Manager Yomi Agunbiade.

Kezar alone — which the U.S. Department of Public Health investigated after reports that employees were getting sick and dying of cancer from asbestos and lead contamination — required the department’s entire 2007-08 lead-cleanup allotment, part of 2008-09’s and another $241,000 in department funds, spokesman Elton Pon said. Paint replacement and other cleanup is due to finish in November, Pon said.

Ten other sites slated for lead cleanup in 2007-08 remain on the back burner, according to Agunbiade’s report.

Roughly 15 to 20 Recreation and Park employees work at Kezar at any one time. The U.S. Department of Health and HumaN Services investigated the gymnasium and offices in 2007 after a handful of former employees died of cancer and two current ones were diagnosed, but found no evidence that the presence of lead and asbestos were the cause, according to a report from investigator Elena Page.

“We know there should not be any exposure to lead — there is no ‘normal level,’” said Cohn, whose office handles more than 400 cases of lead toxicity in local children each year.

In addition to city workers, Kezar hosts youth basketball practices and games, and is the current home of the Bay City Bombers Roller Derby.

The presence of lead in the building “is common knowledge,” Bay City Bombers general manager Jim Fitzpatrick said. “There’s no concern from us — they say everything is being taken care of.”

By the numbers

149: Sites where lead abatement is complete (1999-2008)

Examples:
Glen Park playground and recreation center
Duboce Park and Harvey Milk recreation center
South Sunset playground
Chinese recreation center
Golden Gate Park playgrounds

136: Sites where abatement is still needed

Examples:
Palace of Fine Arts and Exploratorium
War Memorial Opera House
Justin Herman Plaza
Fort Funston
Japanese Peace Plaza and Pagoda

Total sites: 285

Source: Recreation and Park Department

This story originally appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.

Beth Winegarner
Examiner Staff Writer
September 13, 2008

San Francisco may have a reputation as a health-conscious city, but a recent study found that kindergartners in local public schools were more likely to be overweight than kids their age nationwide.

A sample of 4,000 kindergartners entering school in the fall of 2007 showed that 18 percent of girls and 20 percent of boys were overweight, compared with 13 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys nationally, according to an Applied Survey Research study commissioned by First 5 San Francisco and the San Francisco Unified School District.

“There are plenty of kids who, by the time they’re 4 or 5, have a weight problem,” said Dana Woldow, co-chair of the SFUSD’s nutrition and physical activity committee. “And you’re going to see it most in low-income, Latino, Pacific Islander and African-American kids.”

Hispanic kindergartners composed 28 percent of last year’s student population, which also included 26 percent Chinese, 17 percent “other,” 16 percent white and 13 percent black students, according to the APR study. In addition, 54 percent of SFUSD students qualified for free or reduced-cost lunch in 2007-08, meaning their families took in less than $39,000 per year, according to Woldow.

Researchers also found that fewer San Francisco kindergartners were at risk of becoming overweight when compared with the national average, but speculated that parents might have under-reported the weights of “borderline” children but were more straightforward when their children were obviously overweight, according to the study.

More children become overweight as they get into their preteens. While 13.9 percent of children ages 2 to 5 were deemed overweight nationwide, that percentage rose to 18.8 percent among children ages 6 to 11, then fell slightly to 17.4 among kids 12 to 19, according to Karen Hunter with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, officials are working hard to help kids shape up.

Public-school kids are required to spend roughly 20 minutes per day in some kind of physical activity or play, from hula hoops to somersaults or running games, according to Mark Elkin in the SFUSD’s health division. Their school-provided meals also must meet U.S. Department of Agriculture nutrition regulations, Elkin said.

Outside of school, children may stay outdoors because their neighborhoods are plagued by frequent violence, said Department of Public Health worker Christine Ngoette, who focuses on citywide fitness and nutrition policy.

“I would look at Sunday Streets as an example of how we’re trying to create environments that are conducive to getting outside and having fun,” Ngoette said.

How San Francisco compares nationwide

Kindergarteners in overweight category (95th percentile or more):

SAN FRANCISCO
Boys: 18%
Girls: 20%

UNITED STATES
Boys: 13%
Girls: 15%

Average number of overweight children, nationwide:
Age 2-5: 13.9%
Age 6-11: 18.8%
Age 12-19: 17.4%

Sources: Applied Survey Research, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

This story originally appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.

Beth Winegarner
Examiner Staff Writer
February 27, 2007

A computer glitch caused the California Department of Health Services to stop reimbursing thousands of Californians for their Medicare premiums, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Monday.

The lawsuit, which represents clients in San Francisco and San Mateo counties along with 16 other counties in California, alleges that after DHS began using the CalWIN computer system to manage its Medicare rolls, thousands of low-income clients were accidentally dropped.

When that happened, clients stopped receiving medical-care reimbursements without any notice, according to Melissa Rodgers, directing attorney for the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, who filed the lawsuit.

For example, when San Mateo County began using CalWIN in October 2005, clients such as Juan Ledezma were dropped. Ledezma didn’t realize the problem until March 2006, when he received a $786 bill from Medicare; he is on a fixed income of $830 per month.

“The old system was set up to keep people on unless they were no longer eligible [for reimbursements], in which case they were notified,” Rodgers said. “The new one was designed to cut people off unless they went in manually to prevent it, even if they were continually eligible.”

The California Department of Health Services became aware of the glitch shortly after clients began receiving unexpected Medicare bills, according to department spokesman Michael Bowman.

DHS has already ordered the counties to correct their automated systems, and has provided the Centers for Medicare Services with the names of clients who were accidentally discontinued so their premiums can be repaid, Bowman said.

The Health Plan of San Mateo was able to get roughly 100 of its clients re-enrolled in the reimbursement program by working cooperatively with the San Mateo County Human Services Agency, said Health Plan’s Carolyn Thon. The plan covered members who were dropped by Medicare in the interim.

“It took us awhile to realize the connection” between the CalWIN rollout and clients losing their coverage, Thon said. “Once we recognized what happened, we were able to resolve our members really quickly.”

In the suit, clients are seeking reimbursement for their medical bills as well as an assured fix for the glitch that disenrolled them, according to Rodgers. Although DHS is asking counties to fix the problem, it’s unclear whether the responsibility lies with individual counties or the DHS, according to Bowman.

No court date has been set in the legal proceedings.

This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.

Beth Winegarner
Examiner Staff Writer
November 24, 2006

As mercury levels rise in Bay Area water systems, officials are targeting one of the neurotoxin’s primary sources: dentists.

As much as 60 percent of the mercury in the region’s wastewater comes from dental offices, according to studies from the Bay Area Pollution Prevention Group. However, wastewater treatment plants aren’t designed to remove heavy metals such as mercury from the water. By 2010, mercury discharges at the South Bayside System Authority treatment plant could exceed allowable levels, according to a recent article in the authority’s newsletter.

In San Francisco, Palo Alto and the East Bay, laws requiring dentists to stop flushing amalgams have reduced mercury levels significantly, according to Karin North, member of the Bay Area Pollution Prevention group.

“We saw a 94 percent reduction in the average mercury concentration coming out of [dental offices] and a 64 percent reduction once it reached the sewer lateral, where you have multiple businesses feeding into it,” North said.

Now, roughly 1,500 Bay Area dental offices no longer dump mercury-laden materials, according to Teresa Pischay, policy analyst with the California Dental Association. In unregulated parts of the Bay Area, including San Mateo County, wastewater officials and the CDA are urging dentists to divert those materials voluntarily.

The elemental mercury contained in dental fillings is safe, but once it enters local waters — particularly the shallow waters in parts of the San Francisco Bay — it becomes methylated mercury, which can contribute to symptoms of mercury poisoning, including birth defects and brain damage, according to North.

While many dentists want to reduce the amount of mercury they’re flushing into local sewer systems, setting up the technology for proper disposal can be costly, according to Pichay. A unit that collects amalgam waste at the dentist’s chair can cost $800 to $900, plus $400 a year in maintenance costs.

“We are members of the community at large,” Pischay said. “[Diverting mercury] naturally falls into our responsibility as citizens.”

This article originally appeared in San Francisco Examiner.

Beth Winegarner
Examiner Staff Writer
June 8, 2006

The high cost of living and low number of nursing-school graduates are leaving the Peninsula with a significant shortage of nurses, according to a report released Wednesday by a San Mateo County grand jury.

As the senior population booms and children develop more obesity-related health problems, the demand for nurses grows higher than ever. The greater Silicon Valley needs nearly 400 more nurses than are currently being trained, according to experts with the Silicon Valley Center for the Health Professions.

While hundreds of aspiring nurses apply, nursing programs at Cañada College and College of San Mateo have slots for just 100 students a year altogether.

Meanwhile, expensive housing continues to drive skilled nurses away from the Bay Area, according to the report.

Health care officials across the Peninsula agree with the grand jury’s finding and say they face ongoing problems achieving the state mandate of one nurse per five patients.

“It’s a shortage all the way through the pipeline,” said Dave Hook, spokesman for the San Mateo Medical Center, which currently has a 12 percent vacancy rate in nursing positions.

To make up for those vacancies — as well as cover sick leave and vacation time — the center spends an extra $3 million annually to hire temporary nurses and pay existing staff overtime.

The grand jury recommends that the San Mateo Community College District push harder to create a new training facility called the Silicon Valley Center for Health Professions and raise salaries for nursing instructors.

While local nurses make $80,000 to $100,000 per year, instructors make $60,000 to $80,000, according to the report.

The jury also recommends that the Peninsula Health Care District continue funding nurses’ training and that PHCD and the Sequoia Healthcare District help nurses obtain loans for housing.

“I think that’s something that is certainly deserves looking into, but it might be something that’s outside of our legal bandwidth,” said Stephani Scott, CEO of the Sequoia Healthcare District.

Sequoia Hospital maintains a relatively low number of nursing vacancies — about 2 percent, according to Nurse Leader Linda Kresge, but those vacancies cost an extra $2 million per year. The hospital recently recruited new nurses from Korea, a strategy that costs about as much as training nurses domestically, Kresge said.

Sequoia has been able to retain nurses by offering them flexible schedules, free insurance coverage for employees’ dependents and competitive salaries, according to Kresge.

This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.

Beth Winegarner
Examiner Staff Writer
May 15, 2006

To say that San Mateo resident Martha Greenough helped her father, Larry Wenrick, save nearly $8,000 a year by switching him to Medicare’s new prescription-drug plan would be telling only part of the story.

With tonight’s deadline for thedrug plan — known as Part D — looming, Greenough sat down at her computer and attempted to navigate Medicare’s Web site, something her 78-year-old father couldn’t do. But the process was confusing, even for Greenough, a bookkeeper. So she called consultant Esther Koch for help.

“I thought if you had all your information and you could list all your drugs, it would help you,” Greenough said. “But not at first.”

Koch, who has trained dozens of companies and other groups in the Part-D process since the enrollment period opened January 1, admits the new plan is complex. It’s designed primarily to help citizens with little or no prescription drug coverage, and offers a dizzying array of drug plans, pharmacies and eligibility requirements.

Signing up starts with knowing what plan you currently have — something many seniors don’t know, Koch said. About 25 million of those eligible for Part D already have coverage, meaning they don’t need to — and shouldn’t — switch to the Medicare drug plan.

“There are some pitfalls if you do it by mistake,” Koch said. Some confused enrollees have been kicked off their current health care plans when they signed up for the new prescription-drug plan.

Likewise, low-income Medicare beneficiaries who already receive drug benefits find that if they switch to Part D, they wind up paying more for the drugs they need, according to David Lipschutz, staff attorney with California Health Advocates.

Part D’s complexities have led to misinformation. He cited a recent study that found one-third of those calling the Medicare information hot line received faulty instructions.

As it stands, those who don’t sign up by midnight tonight will not have another opportunity to enroll before November. When they do, they will be charged a penalty of roughly 32 cents for each month they weren’t enrolled, Koch said.

As of May 7, 800,000 eligible Californians had not yet signed up, according to Medicare spokesman Jack Cheevers.

Despite the complex enrollment process, many people will benefit from Part D, Lipschutz acknowledged. “There’s no question it’s helped some people. And there’s no question it’s harmed some people.”

This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Examiner.

Beth Winegarner
Daily News Staff Writer
December 2, 2005

Students, teachers and family packed Carlmont High School’s Little Theater yesterday for a lunchtime ceremony to celebrate the life of Carlmont senior John William Skinner.

The event made it clear just how many lives the 17-year-old touched, including friends, teachers, classmates, family and supporters from across the Peninsula. Skinner was found dead Tuesday on the rocks near the northern side of the Golden Gate Bridge, where he appears to have jumped, according to the California Highway Patrol.

“It was wonderful to see the tremendous outpouring of community support,” said Mark Olbert, president of the San Carlos School Board. “It’s sad that a young person with all that talent and energy and brains and potential died.”

Shortly before his death, Skinner sent cell-phone text messages to a number of his friends, telling them goodbye and saying they could have some of his belongings, including his guitar and photographs, according to classmate Nicole Giron. More than one said that Skinner told them he had “found the meaning of life.”

“He was an amazing kid — that’s the tragedy of it for all of us,” said Linda Stevenin, communications director for High Tech High Bayshore, whose son was friends with Skinner. “He was a sweet kid, and very smart.”

The teen is survived by his parents, David and Lucia, his brother, Joe, a San Carlos Charter Learning School student, and his sister, Caroline, a Carlmont graduate. Funeral services have not yet been announced, but the family plans to bury him in his homeland, Guatemala, according to Carlmont Principal Andrea Jenoff.

Skinner was one of the first students to attend the Charter Learning Center, starting in third grade and continuing through eighth grade before starting at Carlmont. He was a math and science buff, as well as a musician and soccer player, and in recent years was designing a computer game with some friends, according to Stevenin.

He was highly academic and founded a peace-based club at Carlmont called the Doves, Jenoff said.

While the adults in his life admired Stevenin, his peers relied on him for support. “He always made people laugh, and he was always there if you needed him,” Giron said.

“He was the main one we would go to when we needed help,” his friend Richard Jackson told the Daily News Wednesday.

As friends and family continue to mourn, Skinner’s death brings home the ongoing debate over building a suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge. While many argue that a barrier would mar the aesthetics of the landmark, local mental-health workers say it’s long overdue.

Earlier this year, the Psychiatric Foundation of Northern California, representing 1,200 psychiatrists, convinced the bridge district board to embark on a $2 million study of a barrier; so far, $1.8 million has been raised.

Skinner was the twentieth person to jump from the bridge this year and the sixth under the age of 25 to do so, according to Mel Blaustein, president of the foundation. Eighty-seven percent of people who commit suicide by jumping from the bridge are Bay Area residents.

Bridge jumpers “tend to be impulsive,” Blaustein said. “They’re looking for a quick way out, but if you can prevent that, they’re usually happy to be alive.”

A recent study found that among 515 people who were pulled from the bridge during a serious attempt to jump, 94 percent did not subsequently commit suicide, according to foundation consultant Paul Muller.

“It’s been obvious in the psychiatric community for a long time that barriers are needed,” Muller said. “These deaths can be prevented.”

Teen suicides can inspire copycats
In the wake of a teen’s death, particularly from suicide, friends and classmates are more likely to become suicidal themselves, according to Michelle Joyce, manager of the San Mateo Crisis Center.

The crisis center is staffed by a number of teenage volunteers who counsel peers dealing with depression, suicidal thoughts and tough times, Joyce said. Some of those counselors will visit Carlmont High School next week to talk about warning signs, such as drastic changes in behavior, losing interest in hobbies, giving away prized possessions or increasing use of drugs and alcohol.

Counselors will also encourage frank dialogue about suicide. “A lot of times people shy away from the issue. We train our people to not be afraid to say, “Are you thinking of killing yourself?’” Joyce said.

The center offers a variety of resources for teens and families, including:
* A 24-hour hotline at (650) 579-0350
* An online chat Monday through Thursday, 4:30 to 9:30 p.m., at www.onyourmind.net
* Counseling for parents, with information at www.yfes.org

Beth Winegarner
News Pointer Editor
March 30, 2004

When Lisa Tabb recently breastfed her 7-month-old daughter at the Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, she didn’t expect it to become a civil rights issue.

Tabb said that when she visited the center on March 4, she was breast-feeding her infant while watching her 5-year-old son, Aaron, swim in the pool. Within minutes, a staff member approached her with a towel and asked her whether she would cover up, because someone in the pool had complained.

She had been a member of the center, off and on, for several months; it was the first time Tabb was asked to cover herself. She was shocked.

“It was outrageous. She said, ‘Someone has complained, and that’s our policy,’” Tabb said. She immediately canceled her membership and called the center’s director the next day to ask about their policy.

According to a letter Tabb and her lawyer, Larry Organ, sent to the JCC asking it to change its policy, Judy Wolff-Bolton returned Tabb’s phone call and confirmed that “it was in fact ‘their policy to ask a member to cover up when another member complains.’”

“It’s our policy to promote breastfeeding throughout the center. We openly encourage mothers to breastfeed in our center, and it happens here every day,” said Patty Gessner, director of marketing for the JCC.

In Tabb’s case, Gessner said, there were “extenuating circumstances. The manager felt it was inappropriate. She asked her to consider covering up, [and] did it very, very politely.”

A California law, passed in 1997, made it legal for a woman to breastfeed her child in any location, public or private, where the mother and child are authorized to be present, except the private home or residence of another.

Organ said that when Tabb pressed Wolff-Bolton regarding the legality of the JCC policy, “She responded, ‘Come on, there are men and boys here.’ The problem we have with it is, that’s exactly what the statute was intended to avoid. [The policy] suggests several things that might discourage women from breastfeeding — that somehow it’s inappropriate, or offensive to other people. The reality is, if people find it offensive they should just not look.”

“It’s not in the spirit of the law,” Tabb said. “It’s against the law for them to be asking me to cover up. They don’t interpret the law that way … their lawyers say that they believe they are within the rights of the law.”

“This is not an issue at the JCC. We’re sorry she was offended,” Gessner said. “In no way did we intend to discourage her from breastfeeding her child.”

Tabb told the JCC that if it did not change the policy, she would consider legal action. “They say they are going to educate their staff but they don’t say they’re going to change their policy,” she said.

“It is a civil rights issue,” said Organ, who works for the law offices of Philip Kay, which handles sex harassment, race discrimination and whistleblower cases. “It’s important for women in this state to be able to assert their rights without being discouraged from doing so. We are still trying to work it out without having to file [suit]. All Lisa wants [is for] the JCC to change their policy. She’s not looking to get rich.”

Tabb said that once it happened to her, she asked other women and found that many had been asked to cover themselves when breastfeeding in public places. “My feeling is that I was harassed. It’s outrageous. It has intimidated women. I’m the only one who has stood up about it, but it’s the most important thing we can do.”

This article originally appeared in the San Rafael/Terra Linda News Pointer.