A scary little news story...

Here is my question...

If a woman is desperate enough to want to abbandon her newborn child by throwing it into a dumpster... is she actually going to let a sticker that says no babydumping stop her...?

What about helping people out so they won't have to dump their babies.
You don't change the world by putting up a sticker.

<font color="00cc99">That's a half-arsed attempt to stop baby dumping, geeez!</font>

Jorath, the State of NY and my local area have done something that actually seems to have helped. We have a program that allows a mother to leave her newborn (there's a limit on how old the child is) with designated SAFE places (hospitals, police stations etc) without any criminal charges of abandonment etc placed on her and her child will be a ward of the state and adopted if she chooses not to change her mind within a certain period of time.

The idea here was to make it 'safe' for desperate of confused mothers to leave a newborn without fearing arrest etc, thus making it more attractive to leave the child in a safe place than to kill it or abandon it in a dumpster etc. After seeing a news story where a mother left her newborn in the woods to die because she was afraid of her husband (he didn't want more kids) I am glad that at least something positive has been done. It's not the whole answer, but it sure beats the alternatives. :( Several unwanted babies have left in heated, warm and safe sites run by this new program, instead of dumpsters and woods and God knows where else. They have a chance in life that otherwise might not have been given them.

Yes, we have practically the same law in Texas, and ot seems to have helped. Poor kids, babies having babies...

I agree completely. It is truly sad that these kinds of situations occur, but I am very happy about the establishment of this program and it is having positive results. and that is what counts [img]smile.gif[/img]

Cloudy,
That policy is pretty nation-wide. It has saved many a baby's life. Still, there are the extreme cases where people do dump their newborns in dumpsters and worse. Call it uneducated, call it heartless, call it stupid; anyway you look at it, its a crying shame.

[ 08-22-2002, 11:40 AM: Message edited by: Moni ]

Moni, that's good to hear. :D A few years ago when NY implemented it they said it wasn't being done in many places so I was interested to see if it worked and so far it has done well. Many healthy children owe their lives to the fact that their mothers saw the ads and felt safe turning their children in to the hospital or library etc instead of a dumpster. I thank God for that law and the people who maintain the program. Nice to know it's spread out and more well known than it was then!

poor kids :(
There are many cases of that here and we operate a similar program.

Cloudy,
Yeah as far as I know it has been going on for, oh somewhere in the neighborhood of a decade (or longer) in the western half of the U.S.
CA and AZ use Firestations as drop off points as well and they seemed to be the most popular for the anonymous drop-off program for a long time. I am glad to see communities nation-wide take a united stand for the helpless. God knows it really has saved a lot of children's lives. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 08-22-2002, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: Moni ]

Well I'm glad they have this program, and even happier that it works. This story just amazed me, how dumb people can be.