SAFE HAVEN IN SOUTH CAROLINA: IT’S A GOD THING

We’re all familiar with the idea that adoptees are God’s Gifts–to adopters that is. How many times do we read sappy stories in the newspapers, especially around Mothers Day and Christmas, about how we have fulfilled other people’s lives. Created their joy and happiness. Are God’s little gifts. I don’t remember my own adoptive parents talking like that. Ever! (As a sidenote my birth mother adopted two children and my birth father adopted his stepson, and neither of them ever treated these kids like they were little miracles either.) But then, that was back in the old days when adoptive parents didn’t feel they had to brag their good deeds 24/7, adoption wasn’t a major part of dinnertable discussion, and adoptees, if they were smart, kept their mouths shut. Alas! No more! Now adoption has been outted as THE celeb-trendy way to make a family. It’s as popular as Walmart with everybody boasting about their baybee saving–as if stranger infant adoption were about rescuing us from the jaws of the trash compactor.

One of the more pernicious aspects of all this is the idea that we, as a class, were created by God for some good purpose–unlike the rest of His creations who apparently were made to simply coddle us Special People. We Special People, in fact, are so special, that we’re not allowed to know where we came from, giving us a sort of divine aspect like, dare I say, Jesus. Not that I particularly mind my divine status, but if I’m so divine howcum I have to deal with the adoptee-hating dolts in Right to Life and the ACLU? Shouldn’t I just be able to higgily-piggily them away?

No place is this Special Status more apparent than with safe havened babies. In story after story after story we are force-fed the idea that God created safe haven drop-off spots, that mothers who are suckered (oh excuse me–led is the proper word) by the hype were suckered not a PSA or a poster but by God Himself; and most importantly, that He has a special purpose for these Special Babies. According to the Safe Haven Gospel, God realized that He did indeed screw up–no doubt while being distracted in the most inner of His sanctums by the blatherings of GW Bush and James Dobson–and the baby sure enough ended up in the wrong tummy. If he could thank God, then He would, for safe havens to fix up His foul-ups.

Soon, if not already, safe havened babies will take on the prophetic aspect of those babies whose births your neighborhood “crisis pregnancy center” likes to take credit for. They are not only “abortion survivors” but now reach the airy status of dumpster survivors. Can it get any better than that?

The latest exhortation comes out of Rock Hill, South Carolina, where a young Hispanic woman, perhaps an illegal worker afraid of the cops, Homeland Security, and deportation, clearly isolated from her community and social service assistance,and ignorant of US adoption law, stood outside the Piedmont Medical Center waiting for a couple who looked Hispanic willing to take her baby. Providentially, according the Rock Hill Herald, the couple she eventually approached had only the previous day read a safe haven poster on the door the York County Crisis Pregnancy Center, and goooollllly gee, Andy, they knew just what do to. They bundled up mother and baby, called the center, and were shortly escorted into PMC by a friendly Crisis Center volunteer.

According to Trudy Laud, director of YCCPC, a CareNet ministry franchise, the mother was calm but kept her head down and was teary-eyed. “She was scared and really didn’t want to do this, except she felt she didn’t have a choice.” Not content to leave it alone, our baybee saver felt the need to preach to the press, “The law provided life for this child. Rather than having an abortion or throwing her baby in a Dumpster, she did everything she could for her baby.”

Wait a minute, Trudy! You just said that she clearly didn’t want to give up her baby. She was crying. Now you’re saying she would have played dumpster toss with it if not for the good services of your agency? Do you think before you talk? Get a grip! Did you actually present positive, family affirming “choices” to her? If you’d really had the best interests of mother and child in mind you would have advised her of avenues of help her keep her child or how to approach her family and friends, or how she could place it in temporary care until she could logically think out her plans, or how to make an ethical adoption plan where nobody is hiding behind locked doors. What about the father? Instead, you betrayed the mother with your phony good concern and initiatied this little one into the Great Anonymous Brother and Sisterhood of the Safe Haven.

But, full of prim certainty, Miss Trudy washes clean any thought that her “counseling” was amiss. “It’s a God thing. He has plans for that child.”