Women with unwanted pregnancies in Vancouver will now have the option of dropping their newborns off at St. Paul’s Hospital and being afforded complete anonymity and protection from charges of abandonment.
My guess is that this service would appeal to a young woman or teenager who was unaware or couldn’t face up to the fact she was pregnant until she went into labour (yes, it happens!). In this kind of situation the individual might otherwise panic and leave the infant in a toilet or a nearby dumpster. So now the Hospital will take the baby no questions asked.
The challenge would be to get the information out to the community and schools so that women can realize that they do have a legal, ethical option.
The measure seems to be getting a lot of support – except from today’s Globe editorial:
And because the drop-off zone is near the emergency-room entrance – it’s a door that, when pulled, opens to a shelf with a bassinet – it is lacking in anonymity.
No, that’s not true. There is no surveillance video.
Another objection the Globe puts forth is the cost of promoting the program:
One might counter that the site should be promoted so the women who might avail themselves of it do know about it. But how much money should be spent on such promotion to reach isolated, desperate women?
Gosh, how much could that possibly cost to run a few ads and explain the program in the community? I’ll bet some companies would be prepared to do it as a public service.
And how much is an infant’s life worth anyway?
Here’s the clincher:
But harm-reduction doesn’t mean no harm at all. Babies who are abandoned at a hospital have no medical history. They also lose the chance to be adopted by family members – father, uncles, aunts, grandparents.
So is the editorial board trying to say that leaving the baby to die in the dumpster would be better than having no medical history? I think there are a lot of adopted people in that very situation even today. In fact I know one personally. Would they be better off dead?
And the argument about the family not being given the chance to adopt is bogus. If the teenager/woman is that reluctant to confide in her family, chances are that the family dynamics would be such that they wouldn’t be supportive anyway.
Yes, in an ideal world we would not have pregnant women panicking and leaving their babies to die. They would have already made adoption arrangements and meticulously recorded their medical history. They would seek safe, medical assistance throughout their pregnancy and delivery.
But in the real world this seems like a positive step towards looking after maternal and child health right here in Canada.
Admittedly it doesn’t fit in well with the Culture of Death that some media and politicians seem to prefer.
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Related
Maternal health and paternalism – Margaret Somerville.
Don’t forget to check out the comments.
Abortion – Kevin Libin, National Post:
…Canada is the only democratic country on Earth with nothing to say, legislatively, about abortion, and all major federal parties have vowed to leave it that way.
In a country with no rules, and a political class evidently terrified of even considering any, the status quo silence seems bound to persist, even if a large number of voters preferred it didn’t. If Canadians, at least publicly, are incapable of even tolerating an edifying discussion about something like Mr. Harper’s maternal health initiative, so loosely connected to Canadian abortion rights, without falling into predictably paralyzing positions and rhetoric, there seems little hope of us ever seriously confronting it at all…
And in case you missed them, both Sandy and Stephen Taylor have some excellent posts on the subject of ‘culture wars’.
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Big Update
West Coast Teddi has given us the email address for St. Paul’s in case you would like to find out how to make a donation to this very worthy cause.
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Sunday Update
Don’t let abortion issue hijack maternal health agenda – Belinda Stronach (H/T Gabby)
G8 gives thumbs up to Harper’s maternal health project – Vancouver Sun (H/T Sammy)
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Gabby finds some very important information on U.S. abortion policy here.
