Strollerderby : abandoned children

Adopting Kids: Nothing Like Adopting Puppies

JeanneSager — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 20:59:00 GMT

It was supposed to portray the goodness of man, the generous spirit of human beings.

But I found the outpouring of adoption offers for a child abandoned at a North Dakota fire station rather creepy.

The Grand Forks Herald got e-mail after e-mail after reporting that a baby girl was left in a cardboard box at a Grand Forks firehouse, offers of permanent homes for the little girl.

There were parents with teenagers living at home, parents who say they're too old to have another child themselves, parents who are struggling with infertility issues. The parents themselves were doing nothing wrong. They were simply showing they have big hearts, and they were having as hard a time as any of us would at wrapping their heads around the idea of a mother abandoning her child.

But the story of the abandoned child appeared in the Herald on Saturday. The responses started coming on Saturday. Did these people take any time to think about this? Did they consider what they were potentially getting themselves into? I'm not talking about parenting - these people were, by and large, already parents. But this is a child caught in a legal case, a child whose mother is being sought by police, a newborn left in those critical hours after childbirth when her mother could easily have been lost and confused.

Some of these parents might already have been considering domestic adoption; in which case they might already have considered the chance of finding a child whose story was fraught with complications. I understand the desperation for parents who are struggling through the adoption system, the willingness to jump at any option.

But can't they let it sit a day? Can't they wait for Monday, when their lawyer's office opens, when they can approach the appropriate authorities rather than a newspaper? This isn't a puppy abandoned on the side of a road, who can be snatched up in a day by someone with a good reference from a vet and a bag of kibble ready and waiting.

Image: Flickr

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The Trouble with Safe Haven Laws: Some Thoughts for National Adoption Month

Shannon LC Cate — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The recent spate of older child and even teen abandonments in Nebraska under its non-age-specific (but soon to be made age-specific) "safe haven" law has called such laws into question among people who had not previously given them much thought. The abandonments have also raised serious questions about the quality and availability of assistance to families in trouble.

In some quarters, there has long been opposition to safe haven laws, regardless of the age limits they include.

Ethicanet.org, an organization committed to being "an impartial voice for ethical adoption practices worldwide" has a strong statement opposing safe haven laws. While that may sound counterintuitive, Ethica's argument is quite compelling. In addition to finding a lack of evidence that the laws have prevented any dangerous or deadly child abandonments, Ethica believes that:

"[T]hese laws do nothing to address the crisis situations birth parents are faced with that lead them to take such desperate measures....Instead, the laws are far more likely to be used by those who would not have otherwise abandoned a child or by those who unscrupulously want to avoid a paper trail for reasons that have nothing to do with child welfare...There are no safeguards to ensure that the person abandoning the child is actually the mother or father of the child. The child could be abandoned by a controlling grandparent or an abusive boyfriend...a mother could abandon a baby without the consent of the father, who might have chosen to parent the child or to have the child cared for by family members."

There is concern among ethical adoption advocates that the safe haven laws simply open up a loophole through which unscrupulous, possibly black-market baby brokers can slip away from legal oversight. But as an adoptive mother whose children have access to their first ("birth") mothers, the issue that most concerns me about these laws is the effect they ultimately have on the children abandoned anonymously.

Ethica points out that the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child insist that children's identifying information be protected whenever possible, not to mention that governments do everything possible to preserve original families and see that children be raised within them as a preference to adoption by "strangers." To deprive children of "access to information regarding their families, their heritage, their culture, and the circumstances surrounding their birth" is to deny them their basic human rights while also harming them by removing all chance of knowing their family medical history or of having a relationship with biological family members in years to come, should both parties desire it.

This lack of records for the abandoned child is what most trouble Bastard Nation, the advocacy organization for adopted people, which has long lobbied for the opening of court-sealed adoption records at the request of adult adoptees:

"Bastard Nation believes that it is no coincidence that Safe Haven laws have been enacted just as the efforts of Bastard Nation and other adoptee civil rights activists have begun to overturn archaic state laws which seal our records from us....Safe Haven laws, we believe, are simply a tool to codify secret relinquishment and adoption."

Ethica recommends that rather than spending money on passing, establishing and promoting safe-haven laws, states use those resources to educate and counsel women in crisis pregnancies, to assist families in desperate circumstances and to improve healthcare and access to it.

Obviously I realize that there are times when children must be adopted by "strangers" as my own children were. I also realize that in some times and places, circumstances are such that children are abandoned and lose access to personal information most human beings take for granted. But these are tragedies and should not be encouraged or promoted by laws that are supposed to increase the safety and well being of children. This country does have the resources to prevent most child abandonments through health and family services. When adoption is necessary we should be putting those resources towards ethical adoptions that are truly in our precious children's best interests.

Baby Drop Box: The Utmost in Convenience

Jen Chaney — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:32:00 GMT

Remember when you used to slip your rented videos into Blockbuster's after-hours drop box? You can do the same thing with your unwanted child!

Last year, a hospital in Japan created the "Stork's Cradle," a hatch that contains an incubator where people can safely leave unwanted newborns. The initiative was a response to several incidents in which babies were abandoned in parks or supermarkets. Since it was launched, 17 children have been left in the "baby drop box." (Interesting detail: One of them was a pre-schooler. Obviously it's not cool to abandon a child, but one you've already raised for three or four years? That's just stone cold.)

Of course, this isn't the first time such a thing has occurred. Churches and shelters in Italy, for example, have been going the drop box route for centuries, upgrading to the incubator model a few years ago.

As disturbing as the notion of sticking a kid through a slot might sound, these boxes actually do a service. Rather than finding these infants after they've been outside for hours, medical personnel and social workers are able to immediately respond to them, keep them healthy, then help them find happy homes.

Of course, you know what this means. Pretty soon someone will create a Mommy and Daddy Drop Box. If they do, let's hope the kids never figure out how to use it.

Photo: Fox News