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| Photo courtesy of Wired.com |
So I have been really short of time lately and it's been impossible to get a post done. Now I'm backed up and I have a bunch of things that I want to write about.
Tonight I was going to post some photos highlighting Babe's and my recent trip to Washington D.C.
But when I logged onto the Internet I found this article instead. It pissed me off so much that I think I'll just share this and save the pics for another time.
Here is the link to the article about the controversy of "baby boxes".
I always thought that these were a creative solution to a really sad problem. It never occurred to me that anyone, least of all the United Nations, could find fault in them. But then why does it surprise me, people can always find something to get up in arms about.
Vancouver got its first and only baby box at St. Paul's Hospital after a number of babies were left for dead or their bodies disposed of presumably by mothers who were desperate to not have a baby.
The Angel's Cradle at St. Paul's allows a mother to anonymously place her baby inside the cupboard-style bassinet and leave undetected before an alarm sounds alerting hospital staff to the delivery.
The theory is that if women know there is a safe place to leave their newborn and they can do it in secret less babies will be left for dead. Here is an old article about the baby box in Vancouver.
As far as I know Vancouver's baby box has been used only once.
The article states that, "the UN Committee says the anonymous nature of the boxes deprive each baby from knowing their parents; a right all children have under a UN convention."
While children most certainly deserve that basic right they more importantly deserve the right to not be left in a dumpster. And while most children do know where they come from and who their parents are certainly many don't.
What about children who were adopted? Not all adoptions are open and not all adopted children can grow up and track down their birth parents. What about the children whose mothers or fathers won't tell them about their other parent. What about the privacy afforded to sperm donors? Certainly it's better to be left somewhere warm and safe, be assessed by medical staff and then be adopted by loving parents than killed by a confused and terrified mother.
While I highly doubt that baby boxes do much to decrease abortion rates or infant abuse as some may claim they do, I do think that every city should have one. Sadly it's true that they won't stop abandonment of babies, but as the old saying goes, "if it saves just one..."
The article also states that the UN Committee is concerned that babies left by fathers may have been abandoned without the consent of the mothers. Well the opposite is surely true as well.
But we aren't talking about most babies, or most parents. We are talking about a very, very few number of babies that would otherwise be killed or left for dead. Surely most mothers or fathers whose babies were taken by their partner could track their baby down through the hospital it was left at. And while it is tragic that a few babies will be abandoned by angry fathers or pimps to the heartbreak of their mothers these are babies that would probably have been killed at birth by the same men if the baby boxes weren't so accessible.
To me it's just ridiculous to put the right of the child to know its parents over the safety of the child.
And as a side note: The baby who was left in Vancouver's baby box was left with a family history and birth information. Much more than a baby left on a doorstep or in a dumpster usually gets. Maybe the baby boxes not only provide a desperate parent a safe alternative to murder but also allows them some time to think through the decision to abandon their baby and take extra care in doing so.
I'd be really disappointed if Vancouver lost its baby box.
Here are a couple more articles on this issue:
The Guardian
CBC
And in unrelated news.
Here is my opinion on this story - GOOD! I hope my daughter gets better teachers than this loser.
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