A mother whose pastor compared her to a stripper on a pole for breastfeeding her baby in public is hoping to turn her negative experience into a real positive for breastfeeding moms statewide. 

It was a sweltering summer Camden County day in their one-room church for bikers; Nirvana "Harley" Jennette was dealing with a cranky infant.  "I was nursing my baby then, and she was teething and she wasn't happy and she was fussy; and it wasn't like I could go to a nursery to calm her," said Jennette.  "We didn't have one."

So, she began to breast feed.  A woman came up and offered a cover-up so she wouldn't "embarrass" herself.  Another opined her milk wasn't good enough.  And later when the Jennettes spoke with their pastor, "He suggested for me to go to the bathroom.  That was really gross.  People, as a whole, under humane conditions, we don't eat in a bathroom."

A series of talks over months, found no middle ground, no compromise.  And then in February, her pastor said something that rocked the couple.  "He compare me to a stripper on a pole," she said.

Her husband stormed out; discussion over, and Mrs. Jennette was devastated.  Even now, the memory seems to prompt tears,
"It upset me.  It hurt.  It felt like I was sucker punched; comparing me to a stripper was very demoralizing, and it made me feel like a piece of meat."

So Mrs. Jennette is spearheading a statewide nurse-in; five locales across Georgia Monday, one at the state capitol.  They'd like to see the state close the law loophole that police tell her allows a responding officer to make the call on whether a nursing mom is violating indecency laws. 

"Georgia is very pro-family.  We know we can do better than this," she says.

She says, breastfeeding benefits everything from a child's health to a state's budget, and  past time to stop shaming mothers. "We're been treated like second class citizens because we are choosing what we believe is best for our babies."