Last week a Massachusetts Supreme Court judge overturned the decision that denied Sophie Currier additional break time to pump during her medical board exams. The more attentive among you may actually remember that Currier was initially refused in her request to get an additional 60 minutes of break time during the nine hour exam so she could express herself and avoid what we like to call, "rock-hard-hot-screaming boobies." She took the matter to court, and lost, but just won on appeal. If the comments here from my original post on the subject are any indication of the overall sentiment among y'all, some folks think it was a very bad call.
Dahlia Lithwick from Slate examines why there's been such silence on the issue, since this could be interpreted as a victory for feminism, and I agree, because there's a couple things going on. One of the biggies is the fact that many accounts report Currier also gets additional time to take the exam based on disability, namely ADHD and dyslexia. That accommodation is not contested, but again, if you checked those comments, you'll see there's even some, um, mixed feelings on that. And I think this is part of the problem: she's asking for a number of things. Does it reek of a sense of entitlement? Does she want special treatment? And other nursing moms have managed to do the exam with the allowed break time: how come she can't just buck up? Is she just a big ol' whiner?
Okay, here's my opinion, and you can feel free to disagree all you want: I just don't see how 60 minutes of break time gives anyone an unfair advantage. She can't change her answers once she breaks from the test. She's not going to be able to learn years' worth of information in that break time. Again, as long as she doesn't use anatomy notes as breast pads, or claim her study partner is necessary to help her express her milk, I can't see how this compromises the integrity of the exam. Because it seems like the 45 minutes of break time everyone else gets is relatively arbitrary, and likely has more to do with the need to shuttle a certain number of folks through the exam than anything else. And her need to pump, while it might not be life-threatening, is still legit. It's not like she wants an extra 60 minutes because she has a hangover and needs a nap. For some people, going more than a few hours hurts, as I found when my infant miraculously slept through the night one time and I woke up feeling and looking like I had been run over by a milk truck. So I just don't get how her 60 minutes invalidates all the test results, as one of the medical board folks commented here.
I don't think it's fair to ask a woman to defer her exam because she has a nursing baby. Maybe some of us would choose to do that, but we don't know her situation, and if she can get through med school while pregnant, I say, "You go." And honestly, even though on some level I get why people find her request so problematic, I think the one of the benefits of having folks ask for things like this is that it makes us look at the way things are done now. I see much more sympathy for people who suffer through the current systems than people who say, "Nope, that part is not going to work for me, but you still need to let me in." You could make the case that what Currier is doing is more important than invoking her right to whip out her boob in a restaurant, and I'd hate for there to be silence on this one.
So 'course I'd love to hear from you.
Photo: Associated Press
