Baby Hatch Policy Reversal and the Need to Campaign for Destigmatisation
In her excellent 2006 article in the Columbia Law Review on Safe Haven Laws in the United States, Carol Sanger wrote:
'[W]hile there may be a despairing sense of individual acceptance about these cases, the phenomenon of dead and discarded newborns has triggered a swift, widespread, and confident response at the legislative level. Since 1999, in reaction to grim, repeated reports of neonaticide— defined as the murder of an infant on its first day of life —forty-six states have enacted infant Safe Haven legislation.'[1]
'Across time and cultures, parents who cannot or will not raise children because the economic or social cost of doing so is too high succeed in disposing of them by some means or other.'[2]
'Publicity campaigns urging relinquishment may provide pregnant women (or women in general) with all sorts of useful information. Women may learn that unwanted pregnancy is neither unspeakable nor the end of the world, that other women are in the same boat, that a network of adults and other professionals has thought a lot about the problem, and that caring substitute parents are available. Pregnant women and girls may come to understand that one does not have to keep— and certainly one does not have to kill—an unwanted baby.'[3]
In a blog entry dated 28 December 2010, I wrote about the contradiction between criminal law and safe haven legislation, and how classifying baby dumping as murder is legalistically problematic and will be counterproductive in reducing infant deaths as a result of baby dumping.
Since then, there have been several notable developments. On 11 February 2011, Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil stated that the Ministry was not looking to criminalise baby dumping. This is a direct policy reversal from the position of her Ministry in August 2010. In the print edition of the Malay Mail on the same date, Yushaimi Yahaya wrote an excellent opinion on the need to halt prejudicial behaviour towards persons who give birth out of wedlock.[4]
Mr Yahaya’s point, in my view, is succinct and rational. His point is the answer to stopping baby dumping and deaths resulting from baby dumping, along with safe sex education and safe haven laws. Realistically, however, prejudicial and judgmental behaviour is likely to continue with societal refusal to consider that preaching abstinence solely is never going to work. Premarital sex will continue, and embracing harm reduction methods, as has been adopted in recent drug policy, is both socially and politically sound. Judgmental behaviour is exacerbated as a result of the criminalization of baby dumping. What we’re looking for is an eventual possibility of knowing that your neighbour/daughter/son/nephew/niece/sister/brother etc has a little baby boy or girl with their partner, acknowledging that that child could’ve been dead somewhere in a garbage can and feeling happy for that child; that she or he has a complete nuclear family, and understanding that no stigma should be directed towards the parents because they love their child just as you love yours.
It should be noted, however, that infant deaths as a result from baby abandonment in the US continues to occur despite the legalisation of abortion, existence of safe haven legislation, reduced stigmatization of single motherhood, and wide availability of contraception. In explaining this, Sanger refers to a state called the ‘moral panic’ and the fact that ‘many Americans now associate immorality, selfishness, and the destruction of babies with abortion.’[5] In addition to that, there are publicity, logistics, and maternal doubts of the terms of abandonment[6], and continued federally-funded abstinence only sex education[7], giving girls the idea that abstinence is the only way to avoid an unwanted pregnancy, and hence if they do get pregnant, the only way out is infanticide. Many pregnant American girls believe that they still can’t go to their parents[8] as they are ‘terrified of what their parents may say or do.’[9] Arguably, the destigmatisation effort must begin at home.
Naturally such ideas seem foreign to conservative Asian ears, but there is no doubting that the arguments make sense, if the end target is to REDUCE INFANT DEATHS arising from baby dumping. Less stigmatization + uniform and transparent sex education and provision of condoms + empowerment of women + baby hatches equals less infant deaths arising from baby dumping. The question is: Will societal prejudice and moralistic rhetoric continue to kill babies? You decide.
[1] Carol Sanger, ‘Infant Safe Haven Laws: Legislating in the Culture of Life’ (2006) 106(4) Columbia Law Review 753 at 754
[2] Id at 757
[3] Id at 800
[4] Yushaimi Yahaya, ‘For the Record: Prejudices Kill Our Babies’ The Malay Mail (11 February 2011) at 7.
[5] Carol Sanger, ‘Infant Safe Haven Laws: Legislating in the Culture of Life’ (2006) 106(4) Columbia Law Review 753 at 754 at 785
[6] Id at 795
[7] Id at 816
[8] Id at 817
[9] Thomas Fields-Meyer, ‘Dance Macabre’ People Magazine (10 November 1997)
Comments
Post a Comment