Thanks, Brian. I had wanted to say something to that effect, but I just don’t have the way with words that you do.
On the same day that the daughter I relinquised was born, though, a young woman abandoned a baby in a vacant lot directly across the street from the hospital I was in. No one told me about it until several days later, because no one wanted me feeling guilty about relinquishing my daughter. When I did hear about it, I was *pissed. That woman had the same options I did. The counselling didn’t cost me diddly–they worked on a sliding scale. I chose the people who adopted my daughter. That woman could have done everything that I did, and she didn’t.
But Brian is right. I don’t have any numbers handy, but thousands and thousands of babies are born every day. Very few of them are actually abandoned.
“The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his ribcage.” --anonymous redhead
OK. I found some numbers. These are the ones they find out about. These are the ones that did not survive. Add to it the ones that are discovered alive and the ones that remain the birth mothers dark secret. Maybe not rampant, but certainly alarming. If an organization feels they have a solution to decrease this montrosity, I say go for it. http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/27/killed.babies/index.html
If your head is wax, don’t walk in the sun.
-Benjamin Franklin
I know The Onion did an article on this subject as well a couple years ago. Here is the article, although I could not find it in The Onion’s archives, I was able to find a copy here. http://205.177.224.96/jokes/messages/30218.htm
There was a picture along with the article in The Onion, a pink dumpster with balloons or something.
If your head is wax, don’t walk in the sun.
-Benjamin Franklin
Opal: Yes, and there were several offers to adopt that baby. It’s been almost 12 years, but if IIRC, they found the birthmother, too. I do not remember what happened to either of them, though, only that the baby did survive.
“The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his ribcage.” --anonymous redhead
Let’s all also bear in mind that some women who find themselves in this position are virtually blameless from a moral standpoint, because they’re literally mentally and psychologically challenged. Within the last week, another ‘dumpster baby’ was found in the trashbin behind a pawn shop in Shelbyville (just down the road from here). The mother lived in one of the apartments above the pawnshop. The baby was found probably within an hour or so of being left, and is (or was, as of two days ago) doing fine, with very minor hypothermia, and has already been placed with foster parents pending the outcome of the case against the mother, who is mentally retarded and just barely socially functional; unfortunately, she was apparently quite sufficiently sexually functional for whoever knocked her up – who may also have been retarded, for all I now at this point.
What’s really needed is a crisis center for parents (single or otherwise) dealing with the extreme stress of parenthood for which they are not ultimately prepared.