I’ve recently been reading the blog of a birth mother who utilized her state’s Safe Haven laws after her daughter was born. ‘Safe Haven’ has given me something new in the adoption realm to ponder - but I am admittedly, naive.
Today the local mass media has ‘reported’ continuously on a newborn who was brought to a Hillsborough County (Tampa, FL) fire station and left under ‘Safe Haven’. All day I’ve heard this tidbit of information over and over and over… and you know what? I find myself really bothered by the fact that ’safe’ doesn’t equal ‘anonymous’.
It’s made me downright angry.
Somewhere living (hiding? fearing? hurting?) near me is a mother feeling not-so-safe right now as her ‘anonymous’ story is plastered into a public spectacle.
After the blogger I referred to above wrote, recently,
“I’m different. I’m marked. I’m associated with women who put babies in trash cans, women who get late term partial birth abortions, and women who fiercely deny their child… In my mind I’m none of those things… But in the mind of society, I am… there are days when… I [want]… people would see that I didn’t do what I did because it was a last minute change of heart instead of killing my baby.“
… I realized she’s right. Society does look at women who ‘abandon’ their children as a lower-class of individuals… or potential murderers.
I have thought in the past, “it’s better that she used safe haven instead of killing the baby,” and now I’m ashamed to admit how low and disrespectful my thoughts were… and how naive and idiotic.
My thoughts should have been (and are today) concern for the child and the mother’s well-being, and not in the judgment of a parenting decision - possibly the last PARENTING decision the child’s mother will be allowed to make.
I don’t want my parenting decisions judged or made into a public spectacle - so why should this mother be submitted to the same? Her obvious need for anonymity might have lead her to the decision to use ‘Safe Haven’, but how safe will she really be (will the baby be in his/her future?) today, tonight, tomorrow, next week, next year….
A child placed by a mother or parent in a ‘Safe Haven’ should be safe - in all aspects - and need not worry about so much as even feeling unsafe.
2008/03/26 21:49
Thank you for this post Krissi, and your honesty in writing it. I would have been horrified had my story been turned into a media circus like that. I truly do appreciate your ability to look at how your perspective became what it is today, and I do not at all have an issue with you using my words to get there or to illustrate the point.
Thank you again for writing this :)
2008/03/26 22:00
Thanksgivingmom -
… and thank you for sharing your blog with me and giving me yet another point of view to think about. Just about the time I think I’ve got things figured out I realize I never will :)
Krissi