COLUMBIA, S.C. - Less than a year after a woman was asked not to nurse her child in a Victoria's Secret store in Mount Pleasant, the South Carolina House on Tuesday gave key approval to a bill that gives women the right to breast-feed their children in public without fear of being ordered out of sight.

The bill easily received approval with no floor debate.

It lets women breast-feed anywhere they have the right to be and exempts breast-feeding from indecent exposure laws.

"There's no downside to breast-feeding," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Chip Limehouse, R-Charleston, who added he was bottle-fed himself. "Only good things can come out of it."

Breast-feeding advocates gathered at the Statehouse earlier Tuesday to urge the bill's passage.

Supporters included 2-year-old Julian Larsen of Rock Hill, who wore a T-shirt that said "Breast Milk Does a Toddler Good."

Heather Pace of Lexington said she hopes the bill makes breast-feeding in public more acceptable. She said other customers harassed her at a restaurant while she tried to breast-feed her son.

"It was a stressful situation," Pace said. "I went to great lengths to be discreet."

Licensed midwife Tavish Brinton said she was ordered to leave her table at a pizza restaurant in West Columbia while breast-feeding, but she refused. She said such situations discourage mothers from breast-feeding, when they should be encouraged.

"No one minds if a mother or father gives a child a bottle," said Brinton of Leesville, who breast-fed her three children. "Everybody's got to get over it."

Limehouse introduced the bill after an incident last summer at a Victoria's Secret lingerie store in Mount Pleasant.

Lori Rueger said a store clerk told her she could not breast-feed her 10-week-old daughter in a dressing room and encouraged her to use a public restroom in another store instead, a setting nursing moms call unsanitary and uncomfortable. The incident prompted protests and made national news.

Teresa Hill, a nutritionist with the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, said the state is trying to encourage more women to breast-feed as part of its strategy for controlling obesity statewide. The Palmetto State ranks high in the percentage of people who are obese but near the bottom nationwide in mothers who breast-feed their children.

Studies show that breast-feeding babies reduces their risk of becoming obese later. It helps mothers return to a pre-pregnancy weight. It also improves a child's immunity system and aids their development, Hill said.

"We can make the healthiest choice the easiest choice," she said.

The bill still needs a third reading in the House before it moves to the state Senate.

Thirty-eight states have already passed laws related to breast-feeding. Of those, 31 states, including Georgia and North Carolina, allow mothers to breast-feed in any public or private location, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.