Appalled twice

[catsittingstill]

I saw an article about a woman who abandoned a newborn baby at a church, believing people would take it in and give it a better life than she could.

I'm appalled.  I mean, I understand that lack of access to birth control and abortion (or an unwillingness to abort) may lead to a woman having an unwanted baby--I certainly don't blame her.  But that she didn't have access to those things to begin with is appalling.

And I totally understand that she might want her baby to have a better life than she could give it.

No, what appalls me twice over is buried two thirds of the way down the article, in a throwaway paragraph.

According to police reports, Christianson gave birth in a yard outside the apartments where she and her father live. She told Federal Way police that she cut the umbilical cord with scissors, threw the placenta in the trash and wrapped the baby in a beach towel.

Go back and read that again.  She gave birth in a yard.  It sounds like she was alone.  I realize that it isn't usually necessary to go to the hospital to give birth.  But this woman didn't even have a roof over her head or a friend to hold her hand and wipe the sweat from her brow and call for help if something went wrong.   I don't know why she couldn't turn to her father, but since she obviously needed another option, she should have had one.

Jesus, even Mary had a stable. 

Welcome to Culture War Land.  Where birth control and basic medical care are so out of reach that women give birth in ditches.

Message to the In Sorrow Shalt Thou Bring Forth Children crowd: are women suffering enough yet?

Comments

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Several of my teens I have taught over the years have similar stories, getting pregnant and telling *nobody* because of their fears. All of them did not want to have an abortion because it would be murder, and *none* of them went for medical help when the baby was born because they were so afraid. They all gave birth alone.

Cat's cry of "Why did she feel such a life-endangering need to conceal her pregnancy?" is one that none of my girls could tell me, either. They just "couldn't." They boxed themselves in with their own fears.

Talking with them, they all knew the many, many services that were available in our capital city, and all of them chose not to avail themselves of any of it, because they all wanted to keep their secret from everybody - mothers, fathers, friends...and for each one, the secret came as a shock to everyone that knew them, because no one figured out they were pregnant. Some kept the child, and some went to foster care, and some were placed for adoption.

The only surprise that this news story had for me is the age of the woman.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

This makes me so sad.

I wonder if the reason they couldn't was that they were afraid of being slut-shamed; held up to public scorn for the sin of having-sex-while-female. There's a line in one of Bujold's books (about a completely different transgression) in which she says "The root of 'mortification' is death." Maybe they were so afraid of the social cost of letting anyone know that they risked their lives to keep their secret as long as possible.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's that rational--more like being paralyzed with fear. I'd think that most of these young women just have no way of imagining their situations, and so no way of imagining what to do. They just never believed they would be in that situation and so none of the information seemed real.

BTW, we have a very famous example in the news: Bristol Palin.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Most of them didn't realize just how much they were risking themselves, and their unborn children until after the fact. TV births are very fast: the water breaks, and within twenty minutes...

And I think you're right about social cost. For all of the sexualization of the youth of today, there's a double standard. Boys are expected to be experienced; girls are not, unless they're trashy like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton.