Strollerderby : abandoned baby

Dog Rescues Baby

Amy S.F. Lutz — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:35:00 GMT

This sounds straight out of "The Jungle Book": La China, an 8-year-old dog from Argentina, found a baby boy who had been abandoned in a field by his 14-year-old mother, and carried him more than 160 feet to nestle him among her own puppies.

La China's owner heard the baby crying, and called the authorities. The mother came forward shortly after her son was found.

Besides a few bruises - presumably from his journey to join the litter - the baby was unharmed. The temperature can drop to forty degrees at night in this part of Argentina, so locals are hailing La China as a hero.

Maybe they should change the expression "Man's best friend" to "Baby's best friend"!

Man Rescues Abandoned Baby

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 16:42:00 GMT

In order to curb my misanthropic tendencies, I focus on stories like this one, in which someone’s bad deed is canceled out—or at least vastly alleviated—but someone else’s good one. In this case, the hero is a 25-year-old Chicago man named Brandon Shephard, who came home late one night last week and heard a baby crying. Looking around, he found a newborn boy in the bushes outside his apartment complex, wrapped in a plastic bag.

Shephard says his paternal instincts kicked in right away. Since he didn’t have a cell phone, he immediately picked up the trembling infant and ran to the nearest fire station, where he kicked in the door and hollered for help. Firefighters rushed the baby to a hospital, where he was found to be in critical condition. It’s a good thing Shephard’s caretaker instincts were so well honed: the baby, called Wilson after the street he was found on, had hypothermia and a cut lip, and likely would not have survived much longer on his own.

Shephard, Wilson’s self-described “pseudo-father,” says he continues to feel a connection with the baby. Shephard, who was adopted at nine months himself, is hopeful that the baby will be adopted into a loving family.

Photo: Chicago Sun-Times

Baby abandoned in Queens, husband had ordered Mom to have abortion

Brett Singer — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:30:00 GMT

On May 11, a 3-day-old baby girl was found abandoned on the stoop of a building in Flushing, Queens, along with a bag full of diapers and formula.

A day later, police found the mother, a 31-year-old named Hua Zheng, by using information on the hospital bracelet the baby still wore. (Oops.) They also had surveillance video footage of her leaving the hospital with the baby – on Mother's Day.

Zheng is married, and her husband reportedly told her to get an abortion because they couldn't afford to have a child. Doctors told Zheng she was too far along to have the procedure, so she, "lied to her husband and hid her pregnancy." Presumably Zheng told him she had gotten an abortion, then had the baby and left her outside. How she would be able to hide all of this, I don't know.

There are slightly conflicting reports depending on which source you read. The Daily News says that Zheng and her husband have a 2-year-old boy who had been sent to live in China because they couldn't afford to raise him here. CBS News said that the stoop was chosen at random. But Newsday tells us that Kristina Yu, the woman who found the baby on her doorstep, was the babysitter for Zheng's son. It's possible that she used to babysit the son, and then he went to live in China. In the CBS story, Yu said that she couldn't determine the baby's ethnicity: "It looked like it could be an Asian baby. It looked like it could be a mix. I'm not sure."

Once again, as in the "taxi baby" case, the Safe Haven law rears its head. Since Zheng left the baby on a stoop, she will be charged with a crime. If she had brought the girl to the hospital, she would have been able to walk away, no questions asked.

image: amny.com