Nebraska's safe haven law was intended to allow parents to hand over an infant anonymously to a hospital without being prosecuted. Of the 34 children who have been dropped off at hospitals, officials said not one has been an infant.Bold emphasis mine. What a sad state of affairs.
All but six have been older than 10, according to a Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services analysis.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Nebraska is for parents ...
... that don't want their teen-aged kids any longer. I personally know a couple of people who saw this coming, but who were derided on the internet for their speculation.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
Good grief. That is awful. How could someone just drop off a child like that? Hell, I wouldn't be able to do that to one of my cats.
When my wife and I moved to our current locale, we specifically bought a house, as opposed to renting, because we owned two dogs. Renting would have been too expensive with two dogs, with rental deposits and such ... so it seemed that buying was the only viable option.
IOW, I bought my current house for my two (now three) dogs.
Like you, I couldn't imagine doing anything like these, even out of sheer desperation.
*grabs a tissue and blows hard*
Thats awful...i hope those kids are better off without those lousy parents.
We decided to buy for the exact same reason, except we have cats instead of dogs. :) Those pet deposits are outrageous.
I found this blog on a traceback from CNN. I'm posting something I posted elsewhere because I think it applies and I didn't want to have to type it again.
Anyway, this story is particularly poignant for me. See, I had to, in essence, commit my daughter (less than 10 years old) to an institution this week. She’s got very bad autism and is frequently violent. Protective services in this state wouldn’t help us because we weren’t beating the child - she was beating us. (And so you know, a child with no control over herself or her strength can be very dangerous - she’d bloodied my nose several times before she was 8.) We couldn’t even get anyone let us place her until our neighbors reported the issue. At least one agency suggested we legally abandon the child and just deal with the legal ramifications (i.e. going to jail). After three years of fighting, despairing and sometimes hoping I could stomach suicide, we finally found a place that will take her for a little while while the state actually deems to help us.
So I can’t blame these people. I don’t know their stories, but I am betting a lot of them are like me. Parents who love their kids but are pushed beyond human capacity, their house a war zone and living in fear of their own children. Not because they are bad parents, but because no one or two people can be the sole support for such a human being, no matter how much we love them.
So yeah, don’t judge. You have no idea what Hell on earth can be like. Of course, if you really cared, you’d offer to take some of these kids yourself. And then you’d understand the fear, pain and despair as well. If you are sickened, you don’t understand what is actually happening to us.
Anonymous,
Please don't paint us all with such a strong or wide brush. You are correct that we do not know your situation, nor your pain. Many of us have not experienced your heart break, and few of us can imagine how horrible a decision you must have faced.
Believe it or not, however, many of us are more disgusted that well thought out warnings were not heeded, which is why Nebraska now has to back peddle and rewrite its laws. What the news story has reaffirmed for me, as has your comment, is that we are not doing enough as a society to support parents like you. And I lay the blame, quite squarely, on those who do not want to pay taxes for government services. You deserve better, as does your child. I can only hope that with time, both you and she will heal.
kcsphil said it a heck of a lot better than I could have, so I'll let his comments remain the sole ones on this issue. I concur with them entirely as well.
Post a Comment