New York just passed a law legalizing the abandonment of babies. The new law has gotten distressingly little press, but from what I have gleaned –
You can abandon your baby within five days of birth;
You must abandon you baby in a “safe” place (hospitals or fire stations are examples of safe places) and the local D.A. gets to determine whether the location was safe;
You may abandon your baby anonymously; and
Details unknown, but there is a provision that you can change your mind and get the baby back.
The pros in favor of the law are basically to avoid/prevent the “baby in the dumpster” stories that happen all to often.
The cons against the law is that this is the ultimate example of the lifting of personal responsibility in our country.
As I understand it, several other states have enacted similar laws.
I really don’t know where I stand on this law, probably because I haven’t heard the brilliant and conflicting views of fellow Dopesters. My gut reaction is that this is a bad thing, but I don’t often follow my gut on issues such as this.
C’mon y’all take your shot at convincing me, one way or the other.
Sua
Is it really a more “ultimate” example of it than allowing pregnant women to kill their babies? At least the abandoning ones accept their responsibility a few more months than the aborting ones do.
In fact, this is almost a mirror image of the argument used most often to support legalized abortions. The pro-abortion-rights crowd says, “If we don’t make it legal and safe, you’ll have women dying of back-alley coat-hanger abortions!” This law says, “If we don’t make it legal and safe, we’ll have babies dying in dumpsters!”
In this context, the law is hardly a shocker. Most likely, it was designed as a shot against abortion by anti-abortion-rights folks.
It is a very, very tough topic. For me, anything that turns a dead baby into a live one is a good thing. A safe-drop contingeny might lower the infanticide rate, and possibly even the abortion rate. I mean, if someone knew they would have no responsibility for the child after it was born, it stands to reason there is less incentive to kill it.
However, it is still not easy for me to just let personal responsibility fall by the wayside. I mean, two people created that child. There’s got to be some responsibility taken by those whose actions caused the situation to begin with. Dumping your problems on society and then skipping off really sticks in my craw.
I guess if it comes down to it, I cast my vote with anything that protects the life of the child, regardless of other factors. I would not, however, leave the door open for later custody. That to me is too much like a free sitter service. Absolving someone of responsibility is one thing. Actively rewarding them for it is something else.
The difference between adoption and abandonment is that abandonment can be rather ad hoc. All you gotta do for abandonment is, for example, leave your kid on a chair in the ER waiting room and walk away, or sneak into the firehouse and leave the kid on the driver’s seat in the ambulance. That’s it. (In both examples, there would have to be someone around to find the baby in a reasonable amount of time, I would think).
While a bit of an exaggeration, the law legalizes the old “baby on the doorstep” cliche.
As a future child advocate and major proponent of adoption, I must say that if these laws put just ONE child in a better home instead of in a dumpster, they’re worth it. However, I have major qualms about both numbers 3 and 4 on the list. First, with anonymous abandonment, what’s going to keep someone from kidnapping an infant and simply dropping it off at one of these places? Sounds farfetched, but stranger things have happened. The person dropping off the child should somehow be able to prove that the child is theirs, at the very least. Also, some records should be kept–if the drop-off can be anonymous, what if someone availed themselves of that, only to find that they wanted the child back? How could they prove anything?
Of course, I really don’t think that the child should be given back once it’s adopted. First, the birth parents has proven themselves to be rather fickle and unfit for parenthood to begin with, and by the time enough of a change had taken place in their situation to allow themselves to become good parents, the child will probably already be adopted. And while sure, children are resilient and will probably survive when thurst from the only home they’ve ever known into the bosom of strangers, the adoptive parents are not quite as resilient, and their rights should be protected as much as the child’s. They’ve raised this child and formed bonds with it, while the birth parents probably would have thrown their kid in a dumpster if the law wasn’t in place. It’s not fair to them or the child if the birth parent is allowed to suddenly take the child back without questions asked. At best, Social Services should be involved both in making sure the child SHOULD go back, and in the lives of child and parent(s) after he or she is returned.
If the previous rant was incoherent, I apologize–I’m rather tired at the moment.
You can’t put a baby up for adoption anonymously; this is simply a provision for doing so.
I recently had this debate with a friend. We’d never heard of this happening anywhere; she just thought, and had thought for a long time, that this would be a good idea; came up with it independently. At first I was appalled, but the more we talked about it, and the more I’ve thought about it, I tend to agree that anything that gives a woman in that horrible predicament (an unwanted pregnancy) more options is, if not a good thing, at least, well, gives her more options.
I’m pro-choice, but I don’t think there’s any sane person who is pro-abortion. It’s about leaving a woman the freedom to make a difficult decision in a difficult situation. And from that perspective, I’d have to come down on the side of supporting anonymous “abandonments.”
Good point, but I’m afraid that that negates the attractiveness of an anonymous dropoff to a scared teen. I’d assume they just DNA test if the mother wants the child back.
There must be some sort of time limit on when the mother can get the child back; you can’t let the mother decide she wants the kid back when he’s ten years old or something. I haven’t been able to find anything on the 'net about this, though.
I support such laws. I am less keen about letting the mother have it back but I see reasons:
Temporary mental problems like post partem depression might make the mother want to abandon the child and later she might come to her senses and want it back and perhaps be a good parent. Lots of scrutiny should be focused on such a mother but it may be in everyone’s best interest to reunite mother and child.
More women will abandon their child if they tell themselves they can back out of it later. I see this as a good thing. Generally, people who would willingly abandon a child should not raise it.
Reduction in infantcide and possibly ( not likely) abortion. How many fewer infants in dumpsters would it take to make these laws worthwhile? IMHO just one.
To all those talking about how this is bad because it absolves the mother of personal responsibility and that such women should not have had se if they did not want children, and that society is going down hill: PPPHHHHHBBBBTTTT When society can and does hold fathers to the same standards as mothers as far as care of infants then i will listen to those types of arguments.
I don’t know if I’d call the NY law “legalizing” abandonment as much as decriminalizing it.As far as I know, ( someone please correct me if I’m wrong) this type of abandonment would still be grounds for freeing the child for adoption. It would however, end the search for the mother by the police and child welfare, which if successful,usually ends in her arrest. I believe this law would also cover the “mom uses a phony name & address ,leaves the baby in the hospital and then can’t be found” scenario ( not unheard of)
>> Society – or at least the law – does hold the father to the same standards as the mother with regard to the care of their infants.
I am not so sure. I am under the impression a woman can relinquish her parenting rights and give the child for abortion quite easily while the father is usually compelled to pay child support whether he wants it or not.
The same sort of law is in force in Texas where it has been basically ignored by the intended mothers. Similar laws are proposed in California, and North Carolina. Prosecutors have declined to pursue cases of child abandonment in other states in cases where the mother was obviously careful to protect the child by her choice of place, and method of abandonment.
However tempted we might be to find fault with the mother, a large proportion of these mothers are young girls out of answers, and resources. Providing a safe landing zone for the infant benefits society. Until we, as a society have satisfied me that our responsibility to the impoverished single mothers of our nation has been adequately discharged, I will worry more about the infants welfare, and less about the mothers punishment. I support these laws.
#1: In my OP, I noted that there was a provision that the parents could get the baby back. I didn’t give a time limit, and that’s led to some posts on the board. I believe the time limit is 30 days - I didn’t post the limit in the OP because, while I believe 30 days is correct, my memory is failing me on where I read that, so I don’t quite trust it. In any event, it is a relatively short period.
#2: My major problem with the law is that I can’t understand why it is necessary. The only differences I can see between abandonment and adoption is that with abandonment you don’t have to give your name to a faceless bureaucrat (and your name gets sealed), and with abandonment you can leave the child unsupervised, although in a safe place.
For both differences, the only benefit I can see is that you avoid embarrassment for the parent. Is that enough of a reason? For one thing, I’m not sure how much embarrasment is avoided. Despite stories we hear, with most women it is obvious they are pregnant for at least the last 4 months. Furthermore, even when left in a safe place, the parent can leave the child unsupervised, which creates an unnecessary risk, all for the sake of avoiding embarrassment.
In any event, any choice by which you relinquish responsibility for your child/fetus should cause embarrassment. In my family’s experience, an aunt put up a child for adoption in the early 70’s. The experience, and ensuing embarrasment, according to my mother, really changed my aunt’s life, causing her to refocus and reform. Who knows what would have happened to her had society absolved her of that embarrasment.
Sua
Apples and oranges, IMHO. If the woman doesn’t keep the baby (gives it up for adoption, that is), neither she nor the father pays for its keep. If she keeps it, the father and mother are both equally required to pay, under the law.
Well don’t forget that many of these mothers will be under 18, possibly runaways, or kids who run away for the time it takes them to have the kid then return home, etc. They may not be able to give their name or consent without getting into legal trouble. In these cases abandonment would be much more preferable to the mother.
Also, scared mothers may well not be very sophisticated about beaurucracies; you have to call an agency, set up an apointment, show up, look at rosters of potential parents–it can be intimidating if you are 15, panicing, and have problems with authority anyway. Hell, at 18 the paperrwork to get a phone connected can be intimidating-giving up a baby is much more complicated.
My main problem with laws like this are the problems with the rights of the non-abandoning parent. I can see a situation where one parent is absent (out of town, or even estranged) and the other abandons the baby without telling them. In such a case it is not right to sever the rights of the non-abandoning parent; however, it is also not right to take a baby away from its real (adoptive) parents. In traditional adoptions parents go to greaet lenghs (hiring private detecives, traveling across the country) to find both parents and get both of them to sign the release papers–otherwise it can come back to haunt you.
Legally both parents have to agree to an adoption. If one parent dosent and takes custody, the other parent is legally required to pay child support. Gender is not a factor; however most judges and society in general expect the mother to keep the child and the father to pay support, so this us usally the default situation if no one goes to a lawyer and makes a concious attempt to change it.