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

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

She did have access to abortion and contraception, and help with birth and adoption if she wanted it--Federal Way is in the Puget Sound area between Seattle and Tacoma, not the back country. I can only wonder at her motivations.

Earlier links 1, 2, 3, 4.

charged with abandonment of a dependent person in the third degree

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

Just a few years ago,(less than 10 years) Michigan enacted a law allowing desperate mothers to leave new borns at certain places, (Police stations and hospitals among others.) without penalty.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

? I understand that this was in a city. I don't see anything in the article claiming she had access to contraception and abortion, though. I didn't intend to imply that the only possible barriers were geographic, if that was what led to this misunderstanding. My present hunch is that the barriers were economic and informational--that she didn't have enough money for regular services and didn't know how to get free ones (if there are such.)

And even if she *decided* to have a child, I do think she should have had access to medical care--again I suspect it's not that there is no hospital in the area, but that she couldn't afford it on her own, had no health insurance, and had no idea how to find free services (again, if there are any.)

These are the two characteristics that appall me. Well, that and the fact that she was locked out of her & her father's apartment. I wonder what happened there. If her father didn't lock her out, could she not get the manager to let her in? Was she too incapacitated from labor to go and ask? Did she fear she couldn't conceal her labor if she asked? And if that was the issue, why did she feel such a life-endangering need to conceal her pregnancy? That appals me too.

This part is also a little odd:

Clark said he didn't know his ex-girlfriend was pregnant, and thought both had agreed on having an abortion. He told The News Tribune he would seek custody of his daughter.

To agree that she would have an abortion he pretty much *had* to know she was pregnant, right?

Re: charged with abandonment of a dependent person in the third degree

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, there are laws to this effect in a number of states, mostly, apparently, to help desperate parents avoid child abuse.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say, but I think the only barriers were lack of family support for her pregnancy and her trust in her church. The father probably thought she was no longer pregnant, which explains his statements.

For those of you who don't know, Planned Parenthood of Western Washington offers both pre-natal care and abortion services, and discounts to women in need. They don't seem to offer care for birthing--there are very high liabilities associated with that--but they probably do offer referrals. They have a Federal Way clinic.

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

California's newborn law is pretty liberal: fire stations are one of the places that newborns can be dropped off with no questions asked. So are hospitals. This is up until the babies are 72 hours old. I never noticed it before, but our law could imply what you pointed out above: that girls and women are giving birth alone, or at least, without medical help, then taking their newborns to these drop off points. There was a lot of publicity about this in our non-English and poorer communities, but we've still had stories since of babies being thrown in trash cans and left to die. Here, the law was to primarily prevent that, and to prevent having to prosecute young girls who act that way out of desperation.

It's one of the reasons I'm opposed to parents of underage girls being notified if their daughter wants an abortion. I get that teenagers sometimes get wrong what their parents reaction will be, but some are right in their fears: their parents will make their lives a living hell for their being pregnant or considering (or having) an abortion.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Law places large liabilities on medical personnel who deliver a child, so the laws aren't written to require that hospitals take in a desperate mother, and the churches, despite great wealth, also do not offer that service.

As to notification: it is not unheard of for the daughter's pregnancy to be the result of incest. In the final reading, I think, all reasons for notification laws fall before that single reality.

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That, too. Sigh.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Sigh. One qualification: the Catholic Church will take in a desperate mother and take her child for adoption. Notoriously, however, the Church has often abused both mother and daughter.

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

The *Roman* Catholic church, I believe you are referring to. I am an *Old* Catholic, and Episcopalians consider themselves catholics as well. It is the Roman Catholic church that refuses to acknowledge that it is only one expression of "catholic."

The abuses of the Roman Catholic Church are hard to bear. I read an article once that said that many Hispanic women would rather have an abortion now and then--committing one mortal since occasionally--then use birth control every day, committing daily mortal sin. I was appalled that John Paul II would go visit an AIDS hospice when he was in San Francisco, when his church refused to allow the use of condoms to prevent the spread of disease.

Those are only the first two types of abuse that come to my mind...

[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]

I agree with you about parental notification. If a girl gets pregnant, and she believes her parents are not whacked out and abusive about sex, logically they will be the *first* people she turns to for help. If it had happened to me, my first thought would have been "Mom will not be pleased, but Mom will know what to do."

If a girl does believe her parents are whacked out and abusive about sex, what is more reasonable--to assume someone with 12-16 years of experience with these people correctly estimates their attitude, even if her judgment is immature? Or to assume the law knows better, when it has no experience with these people at all and only one possible answer?

I think the entire purpose of parental notification laws is to make it impossible for girls with abusive families to get abortions. Another small step in the whole "making women suffer" thing. But it's the kind of thing they can sell to people who don't want to make women suffer but haven't thought it through. After all, parents must consent to any other medical procedure involving a minor...

[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]

My apologies--you are of course correct. The infamous Magdalene Laundries in Ireland are the immediate reference that comes to my mind, because of the famous Joni Mitchell song.

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

Um. I did sound touchy about the various kinds of catholics. It's a verbal shorthand on the part of the R.C. church that clearly makes me a little crazy.

The Magdalene Laundries was a new one for me. Thanks for the link.

[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.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

At the other end of the scale is the screwup the Nebraska legislature created by not putting an upper age limit in its sanctuary statute. People are abandoning teenagers.