IN MANY WAYS, bill proponents are still puzzling over the amendment. Why, they wonder, would Donnelly and fellow legislators feel the need to restrict breast-feeding, a natural process that cannot fit an artificial timeline? Why would they designate an age limit when the AAP recommends breast-feeding for as long as "mutually desired" by the mother and child? And why would they cap the age at three when the vast majority of women don’t nurse beyond a year anyway? "It doesn’t make sense," observes Jennifer Almeida, of La Leche League, a statewide breast-feeding-support group.

The amendment, advocates argue, seems like sheer nonsense, since it would defeat the whole purpose of breast-feeding legislation. By drawing a line between children younger and older than three, the legislation does not encourage all women to breast-feed. Rather, it favors only some women. There might even be a constitutional argument against the age restriction, they say. The federal courts have ruled that women have a right to breast-feed in public. In the 1981 lawsuit Dyke v. Orange County School Board, the courts found that breast-feeding constitutes an "act of commune" between a mother and a child, protected by constitutional privacy rights. Any age limit, according to Elizabeth Baldwin, a Florida attorney and an expert on breast-feeding legislation nationwide, "would conflict with federal law." She adds, "We’re not trying to protect people from having to see breast-feeding."

But there’s a bigger problem with the age cap: it effectively defines a woman who breast-feeds a child over three in public as a criminal. This provision stands in stark contrast to the original bill, which says that no breast-feeding mom can be charged with a crime. What the amended language implies is that a woman who breast-feeds a child older than three must be doing something wrong, something ill-suited to the public eye — a judgment that, supporters say, the legislature has no business making. Asserts Linsky, "That decision is not up to me, the Senate, or the governor. It’s up to the mother and father." He adds, "It comes down to whether or not the government has any interest in regulating an age limit. In my mind, it does not."

Of course, breast-feeding a toddler is perfectly natural. Katherine Dettwyler, a Texas A&M University anthropologist, has spent the past 20 years studying the act of breast-feeding in countries around the world, including the United States. She is best known for her prodigious research on breast-feeding among primates, the mammals most closely related to humans. In studies conducted in the 1990s, she set out to examine one question: if left to our own instinctual devices (like chimpanzees, gorillas, and monkeys), how long would humans breast-feed? The answer may shock you. "It’s two and a half to seven years," she says. (Gorillas, for example, nurse until their offspring grow permanent teeth. That translates into age five or six in humans.)

Clearly, Dettwyler’s findings are borne out in the real world. Across the globe, women nurse children well beyond age three, four, and even five. "This is standard in 60 countries," she explains, "everywhere but Western culture." In the US, by comparison, 1998 federal statistics (the latest numbers available) show that 64 percent of American women breast-feed their newborns. But after six months, the percentage plummets to 29. After 12 months, it drops to 16. There are no statistics on how many women breast-feed beyond one year.

Advocates blame these low rates, in part, on American culture. In this country, we are taught that breasts equal sex. We get this from low-cut lingerie ads and busty beer commercials. We’ve seen it played out on Baywatch, in Britney Spears videos, and on the cover of Cosmopolitan. At some point, the association with sex became so ingrained that, Dettwyler notes, "people think it’s normal for adult men to suck on breasts but weird for little kids," which, she adds, "is the opposite of biology."

Not surprisingly, advocates regard the Donnelly amendment as yet another manifestation of the breast-as-sex sentiment — the very thing they aim to correct. As far as they’re concerned, some legislator became too nervous about the prospect of seeing women waving their breasts on the T, in the park, on the State House steps. Says Frances Killiam, a Chelmsford mother who breast-fed her daughter Abbie until she was three and a half, "It’s clear that somebody found a woman nursing an older child personally offensive."

Likewise, legislators who support House Bill 2749 cannot fathom any other reason why the Judiciary Committee’s leadership would object to the original language. One bill supporter and a long-time champion of women’s issues blames the amendment on the Finneran loyalists on the committee — Donnelly and State Representative Christopher Fallon (D-Malden), the House vice-chair — who are known to hold rather archaic views about human sexuality and the female body. Explains the veteran legislator: "The Catholic conservatives in the House tend to lump breast-feeding in the same category as sex. Just mention the word ‘breasts’ and certain members go into paroxysms of anxiety."

Linsky, the bill’s most vocal backer on the Judiciary Committee, concurs: "I know for a fact that there are some members on the committee who are much more conservative than I am, and who feel uncomfortable with this bill." He continues, "Members felt that women might be exposing themselves while breast-feeding in public."

It’s hard to determine which committee members oppose — or, for that matter, support — the original breast-feeding legislation. Donnelly, for his part, did not return the Phoenix’s phone calls seeking comment. Neither did Senator Creedon, the committee’s chair on the Senate side. And Fallon declined to comment at all, out of respect for the newly appointed House chair, according to his aide, Kevin Duffy. (On June 5, Speaker Finneran tapped Chelsea state representative Eugene O’Flaherty to replace Donnelly on the House Judiciary Committee.)

But Rob McCarron, the legal counsel for the Judiciary Committee, contends that "everyone on the committee" embraces the breast-feeding legislation, regardless of the amendment. The age limit, he claims, came about after "some committee members" — whom he declined to name — had weighed the medical evidence, submitted by Philipp and Walker, which stressed the value of breast-feeding until age two. "It suggested that [breast-feeding] is most important during those first two years, then starts to diminish," McCarron explains. Around the same time, he says, these committee members read a newspaper article on how people can feel awkward around breast-feeding moms. "The Globe focused on a mother breast-feeding a four- or five-year-old child in a Wellesley coffee shop," McCarron says, "and some members felt uncomfortable about that." They anticipated that many among the general public would share in this discomfort. (In fact, an April 18, 2001, Boston Globe article examined the trend toward breast-feeding-friendly policies, and photographed a woman nursing her 21-month-old daughter — a far cry from five! — while at a Wellesley café.)

In short, McCarron acknowledges just what advocates suspect: "The age of the child concerned some members." But he insists that the amendment, were it to pass, would not make it illegal for mothers to breast-feed children over three. "It doesn’t mean breast-feeding over three constitutes indecent exposure. That’s not the intent."

INTENDED OR NOT, that is the effect of any proposed age restriction, according to Baldwin, the expert on breast-feeding laws. And this explains why no other state has introduced such constraints into its breast-feeding legislation. Only one state — Colorado — has even tried to include an age limit, to no avail. On the contrary, 32 states have passed legislation similar to House Bill 2749. Many have enacted far more stringent laws as well. In New York, mothers may breast-feed in "any public or private location where she is authorized to be," making the act of breast-feeding a civil right. In California, employers must build lactation rooms for nursing moms who return to work. "It’s not like Massachusetts is going out on a limb," Baldwin says. If anything, the amendment would set breast-feeding legislation back.

Advocates in this state agree — so much so that they’re content to let the bill die. Sonja Darai, a breast-feeding mother from Somerville, explains that she and colleagues don’t want to sell out a percentage of the nursing population — no matter how small — just to buy themselves a piece of legislation. "I want that amendment squashed," she says. "I’d rather have no bill, nothing at all." Though no one is actively pushing for it, the amended version could still make its way to the House floor before the formal legislative session ends on July 31. If that were to happen, House members like Story and Linsky intend to file yet another amendment eliminating the proposed three-year age cap. Otherwise, they’ll vote against it. Says Story, "Our attitude is, ‘Let’s declare the [amended] bill dead and start all over next year.’"

It’s a scenario that many proponents cannot quite believe could happen. Walker, with an exasperated sigh, sums up their sentiments best: "How can you take something so simple, so sensible, and make a federal case out of it? My goodness."

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com