Tossing babies into trash dumpsters is wrong.

Great Debates
41

Alright, so now we have both sides of the arguement thanks to Scylla on what the defense would be and what the offense would be (neuron connected a good while back :wink: ).

Now what would be the results if the woman does not win back the custody of the child? More than likely the child will be adopted by some other couple, or in the worst example, adopted by someone in the mother’s own family. The kid has a better chance of living a good life in the former, a chance of repercussions in the latter.

Now, as to giving the child back to the mother, well, the child could live to have a normal life and the mother could be good at her job. But the main problem will be the potential for the mother to do the same action again. She clearly abandoned the child once before, and could easily do it again. Though this is just assumption since we do not have all the details on why she abandoned the child in the first place, the potential still remains that the child may not be as lucky the next time.

I know that having faith should lead me to believe in giving her a second chance and trust that maternal instinct will prevail, but the cynic in me cannot get past the point that this woman already bailed on the responsibility at the very beginning and endagered the child’s life in the process. For the child’s sake, I how the person who determines if the mother has the child or not is a cynic.

And Scylla, I second you on not having much hope for people any more.

42

And after reading articles like this, I believe that, as a society, we treat our children better now than we ever have before.

Don’t let the crackpots make the rest of humanity look bad.

43

Boy, my formatting on that last post is trés crappy. Let me try again.

**

A quote taken from the article referenced above:

"A recent survey of Egyptian girls and women showed 97 percent of uneducated families and 66 percent of educated families still practiced clitoridectomy. Nor is the practice decreasing–UN reports estimate that more than 74 million females have been mutilated, with “more female children mutilated today than throughout history.”

This is supposed to restore my faith in humanity HOW?

**

The author of this piece doesn’t know why footbinding took place (or at the very least GROSSLY over-generalizes this issue). He believes that the presence of a hymen necessarily indicates virginity. I wouldn’t let THIS crackpot convince me of anything either. There is no evidence in this article that things are any better now than they were in the past.

I’m afraid I’m still in the other camp.

Hopefully, it made sense this time. Sorry about that.
(Note : post edited after already having been quoted)
[Edited by Eutychus55 on 03-15-2001 at 03:15 PM]

44

Throwing babies in dumpsters doesn’t make me lose faith. I realize that a vansishingly small percentage of people will do such terrible things.

I lose faith hearing it’s defended. My mind reels at the gross stupidity of arguing de facto that the baby should be returned to the mother without regard to its safety, or to the mother’s telling action.

It’s enough to make me want to listen to Rush Limbaugh. He’d at least get this right.

45

Do you really not see that, at least in the Western world, society has evolved? That the dumpster lady and people of her ilk are the exceptions, not the norm? Read the Addicted to Hate, the Fred Phelps exposé. Once upon a time, in the “good old days,” the way he treated his children wouldn’t have been unusual. Now we can read it and feel revulsion because society has grown.

Is he a crackpot? His credentials are as follows:

Lloyd deMause is Director of The Institute for Psychohistory, Editor of The Journal of Psychohistory and President of The International Psychohistorical Association and can be reached at 140 Riverside Drive, New York, New York 10024. He is author of The History of Childhood, Foundations of Psychohistory,and Reagan’s America.

I don’t know much about the International Psychohistorical Association, I don’t know if they’re considered a valid resource or if this field is in the realm of “junk science.” Maybe someone else can fill me in.

Their homepage is at http://www.psychohistory.com/

But I maintain that the fact that stories about abused, exploited, abandoned, or murdered babies outrage us, make us care, it illustrates that our society has grown. Hopefully we can be a model to other societies that still hurt their children. I’ll lose faith in humanity, and our ability to learn and grown, when we stop caring.

46

I feel so strongly about the child welfare system and how it’s misguided that I had to post to this thread.

As a previous poster mentioned, social services (at least in my state anyway) has as one of their primary (if not ultimate) goal to reunite families/keep them together. Ok, let me stop and qualify everything I’m about to say with this: I KNOW child protect workers have tough jobs, I KNOW they have to follow reams of regulations to cover themselves, I KNOW they have to toe the party line, I KNOW they have high caseloads etc. BUT…the system as it stands is stupid— what is the POINT of keeping dysfunctional families together? Why is it better to give a loser mom/dad ANOTHER CHANCE than give the kid a better home permanently right off the bat?

Sounds simplistic, but let me elaborate: I too recently got the first-hand perspective of a social worker. Several things she said disturbed me: Just one example is, they will from time to time get a parent who says “take my kid(s) I can’t handle it anymore, here ya go”. Now, here is a slam dunk in my opinion… Mom can’t handle kid? Let’s strike now and get ALL these folks OUT OF THE SYSTEM: terminate parental rights and place kid with a relative or in another good home.

But no, in the above scenario, all kinds of costly, labor-intensive services are thrown at the parent with the ultimate goal of reunification. Things like, anger management classes, parent skills taught by a social worker IN THE HOME, and so on (does this sound expensive to you?).

That’s just one example.

To me, the solution is obvious: With some strict laws, identify some very clear circumstances where parental rights are IMMEDIATELY terminated. No red tape, no reunification, no expensive services, no drag on social workers’ time tracking the progress of loser parents. Now, I’m not advocating this in mild, borderline cases, but it could work in the clear-cut ones. For example : dumpster / any other clear-cut case of abandonment / meth lab found in home, and so on. See, everyone wins here, but most particularly the child wins, early on in the process.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone thinks this would or would not work.

47

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Gr8Kat *
**

I do see that. You’re right, I think things have gotten better. I think child abuse is more broadly defined now and thus, kids probably have it better. However, I’m with Scylla…the ways we defend these instances when they happen horrify me. I also am not convinced that just because things are BETTER that they are GOOD. Know what i mean?

**

Again, I think you’re right. But I don’t think the work you’re citing is really any evidence of that. None of these pieces you’re including have any statistical evidence that child abuse is less prevalent now. Perhaps it is. There’s no information here about how abuse USED to be defined as opposed to how it’s defined today. There’s no discussion of numbers of children being treated. My point is not that you’re WRONG, but only that there’s no evidence here to support your argument.

**

He certainly has a list of credentials. However, there are lots of educated nutballs in the world. There are lots of whacko people who have published books as well. And the fact remains that he didn’t understand fairly common things such as reasons for footbinding and the fact that a missing hymen is no indication of missing “virginity.” Thus, I figure the rest of his work is likely full of the same crapola.

**

Have you ever read Urula K. LeGuin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”? It immediately comes to mind.

You’re right…I think continued faith in humanity is what CAUSES us to learn and grow. Just remember, for all the people who are outraged at these stories, there are just as many who are outraged when a child is taken away from a dysfunctional parent. As drpepper pointed out there are entire systems in place to ensure that an abused child never gets a chance to be anything BUT abused.

-L

48

It would be unconstitutional, in that it would tend to deny both the parent(s) and the child(ren) due process. The parent-child relationship is protected under the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

49

Can you expand on your reasoning? I understand that a right to bring your child up as you see fit is protected within certain limits. But I’m not sure I see how that would be violated if we passed a law stating that the penalty for leaving an infant in a dumpster was loss of parental rights. I especially don’t see how this violates the infant’s due process.

There are already some crimes that result in this occurance, no? Under certain circumstances, we give up our first ammendment rights. Say…if we deal drugs out of our garages. I tend to think abusing your child should be one of those circumstances.

-L

50

It’s not the right to “raise your child as you see fit” that’s being protected, but rather the parent-child relationship itself. The state cannot sever the relationship between parent and child without first showing that it has a compelling reason for doing so. The Supreme Court had held that this relationship is so special that a parent whose rights the state intends to terminate must be provided counsel at no expense if he or she cannot afford counsel, the same as we afford criminal defendants counsel. The right to parent-child association is only slightly less highly valued than the right to freedom itself. Summary termination of this relationship is inconsistent with the gravity of the protected interest: we don’t want the state empowered to juggle parents and children nilly-willy. The decision to sever the parent-child bond is one that should not be made without thorough contemplation and without consideration of why the state is empowered to sever it in the first place.

I don’t mind empowering a court to sever the parent-child relationship after the parent abandons the child, when doing so is in the best interest of the child, but I strenuously object to doing so without considering the best interests of the child. A blanket rule (as you suggest) fails to give consideration to the child’s best interests, and as such is unacceptable.

You do NOT give up any of your First Amendment rights merely by having committed a crime. Prisoners enjoy these rights the same as anyone else.

51

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by KellyM *
**

I agree. And I see your point more clearly now.

**

I’m not sure I believe that putting a child back in a home with a parent who put the child in a dumpster can EVER be in the “best interest of the child” though. And I think the general complaint here is that certain institutions are putting the sanctity of the parent-child relationship ahead of the child’s best interest. When they expressly state that their goal is to put the family back together, as opposed to a more appropriate goal of making sure the child is safe, I believe there’s a problem.

They do? You’re saying that an incarcerated person has the same rights to freedom of speech that I do? Their speech is censored. They often have limits on how much time they can spend communicating with others. They can’t own certain things. What they view and read is monitored and censored. Am I wrong?

What I was actually thinking of was that if you get caught with drugs in your house, the house is seized. Ditto for your car. Once you’ve had your due process and been proven guilty, your right to own that property is gone. And once you’re proven guilty of abandonment (and I don’t mean accidentally leaving a child at daycare for three extra hours) I don’t see any reason to feel it’s in the “child’s best interest” to be put back in the home. And I don’t see a problem at that point with stripping the parent of their protected relationship.

-L

52

The way I see it, the parents that do this are the GOOD ones. Being pushed beyond your ability to endure is something that happens to some people. What is unforgivable is to not call the social worker and say “take my kids for a bit until I get a handle on things” but to instead take out your emotional crisis on your child (or neglect your child while you have your emotional crisis or whatever). I know many people, good people, who have caled thier mother or their sister or thier spouse and said “you have to take the kids for the day, I can’t take care of them properly”. This is responsibile behavior, and if you don’t have anyone you trust with your kids, calling the social worker is the responsible thing to do.

53

Well, I have to agree with you here; but that doesn’t mean that I think every case of abandonment should lead, without any exercise of discretion, to an automatic termination of rights. Each case really has to be considered on its own, and we really need to avoid creating hard-and-fast rules for things like this.

Well, the current policy is a backlash reaction to the prior policy of ripping families apart to “save” the children. There is currently a great deal wrong with the way our legal systems currently deal with endangered, neglected, and abused children.

54

Point well-taken, Manda Jo. While ostensibly I can agree with that assessment, I think there’s a problem (and perhaps another debate for another thread here) with using the state as your emotional safety net. In other words, there’s a difference between turning one’s kids over to Grandma or other relative, and not having that family-friend support network to begin with and therefore making a claim on public resources. One could contend that in coming to a social service agency that “at least it’s better than abusing or neglecting the kid, going postal whatever”; however I still don’t think this is necessarily prima facie evidence of a GOOD parent. I know there’s a very fine line here, but I think a case could be made that a parent probably has pretty serious issues if they’ve reached that point in most (but certainly not all) of these cases. [I have no cite to back this up; it’s really just my own opinion]

Yow, because the above scenario is probably relatively rare I’m sure I’ve taken this thread way off topic.

KellyM I always appreciate your concise and informative posts. Do keep on, fascinating stuff.

55

Kelly, MandaJo: there is a law either being proposed or that actually passed in Colorado saying (essentially) that if you “abandon” your kid at a certain number of safe locations (fire houses, hospitals, police stations, etc) you cannot be charged with any criminal action from that and that, with councelling you will generally be allowed to get your child back.

But I’d disagree about hard and fast rules: I’d propose a hard and fast rule that abandoning the child in a obviously dangerous environment (under a dumpster in a back alley in a bad part of town, for example) should always lead to the loss of parental rights, especially since there are places where it’s legal to leave the child where it won’t be endangered.

Fenris

56

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by KellyM *
**

That is true. But there are plenty of instances where the State can show a compelling reason for doing so, and still doesn’t do it. We need to get it to pull the trigger.

57

There was a case in my city about 3 or 4 years ago when a mother did something very similar. She hated her child, so she put it in a grocery-type plastic bag and dropped it out of a 3 story window into a closed-courtyard, where no one ever goes. Luckily, the baby landed in a bush and survived. It did have a broken arm though, and as a lot of you know, a broken arm on a baby can be a real problem. There were many different arguements that the mother should either be reunited with the newborn or not. I think she shoud definetly never see the child again until he is old enough to beat her in the head when ever she tries to come near him. That is my 2 cents :slight_smile:

58

A laudable desire, Fenris, but experience tells me that either you’d end up with unworkably vague legislation (“criminal intent to cause potential injury that a reasonably prudent person would have been able to foretell”), or so specific that you’d end up amending the hell out of it. The first would probably be declared unconstitutional, or could be used too much in cases where a prosecutor wanted to be seen as tough on crime.

As an example, (while I would agree the following is a stupid thing to do, I wouldn’t think that the person who did it should, based on this alone, have parental rights terminated): Parent driving with cranky infant, infant finally drops off to sleep, but parent has to stop at convenience store to get diapers. Taking the child with them would wake cranky infant up, gee, I can just lock the car, run in for a second, make the purchase and drive home in peace. But, police cruiser enters parking lot, sees infant strapped in car w/no one around, determines that this is an abandoned baby.

The second possability would be to spell out in exact language what you mean, but then, you’d get into the case where the law would be too narrow. “felony in this state to leave a child under the age of 3…” then the case happens where the child is 8 but is handicapped, so then you amend the law etc.

No, I think the solution is to keep the laws a generalized scenario with the provision that parental rights can (not must) be terminated if the evidence in that individual case is present.

59

Curse you, wring, you have undermined my entire argument with your well-reasoned logic. I may have to start a pit thread about this. :wink:

I conceed the point. Your “baby at the conviencence store” bit convinced me. Dammit.

Fenris

60

I HATE it when someone ruins the satisfaction of my emotional outrage by being smart and calm and logical. There’s nothing that pisses a furious writer off more! I’m with you Fenris. To the Pit with him!

-L
(Seriously, Wring…well thought out argument and I agree with you…you bastard!)