The PB i(Putative Boss) is tired of writing NAAM blogs every day, so she assigned the task to me today. She’s doing a poetry reading tomorrow at the Asian Cultures & Education Center and claims she has to prepare her “presentation.” Blog writing spoils her concentration and ability to find her authentic voice. She thinks she’s Meryl Streep or somebody.
Well, this is fine with me. I’m tired, too: of being a personal assistant cat wasting my time supervising my own personal assistant cat, Boba, who refuses to lift a paw to file a lousy piece of paper or install a new ink cartridge in the printer. The only thing she is good at is eating and staring out the window at the back fence (thinking “great thoughts.” She says she’s an “idea cat”). She also watches General Hosptial and crushes on Dante.
Anyway, the DB said I could pick my own topic. It need not be analytical, academic, or profound. Pointing out another example of baby box pretensions would be good enough. Here goes!
Chattanooga got its first Safe Haven Baby Box a few days ago. Naturally, the city is thrilled, especially since it didn’t have to divvy up the money for it. Read Taylor, civilian, donated $25,000 to the project, inspired, he says, by a friend in Austria who adopted a baby hatch baby. The project was organized by Carol Burhenn, the mother of Taylor’s friend in Austria.
Burhenn gave the company line to the press. Trad safe havens “undermine[s] the notion that surrenders are anonymous.” (But they are anonymous! Does she think that nurses and social workers run around town telling everybody what you did? ) Well…see…..the parent is forced to communicate with a live receiving agent in person…and that’s just not dignified! It’s downright stigmatizing. Because… abandoning your baby anonymously just isn’t done, which apparently is a mean thing to fuss at somebody about.
Burhenn continues:
“It’s totally anonymous,.. “It gives them a little bit of dignity at that point. It’s a difficult thing, and the reality of it is, none of us ever want to see a woman in this position, but if they are, this is better than the bench outside of the firehouse.
What in the world is “dignified” for a mother sneaking around in the middle of the night and sticking a secret baby into a hidy-hole at the fire station and running off? And what kind of dignity does that baby have being ditched, possibly naked (sometimes with a placenta hanging on it or covered in God knows what) with maybe not even a blanket–and certainly no name or history? I can guarantee you that when that baby gets older they will not be struck by the “dignity” of their unceremonious dump unless they’ve been sane washed by SHBB Inc and thankful parents to believe otherwise. (The company likes to keep in touch with the folks who adopted their product). At least in most normal relinquishments, there is a sense that the adoption plans were thought out, not a dump and run. Care to address adoptee abandonment issues and birthmother guilt even in the “best” adoptions? Thought not.
The baby abandonment box offers no “dignity” for mother or child.
And btw, leaving a baby on a fire station bench is not considered a legitimate legal baby drop-off.
I am so tired of this baby box BS, and I’m not even doing a poetry reading tomorrow I had to take a nap in the middle of writing this blog. In love and solidarity…Angelika, the Personal Assistant Cat
Cross-posted to Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now
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(No, it will never be X!)
Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now!
Poke the Bear 2024
Day 15 — 15 Days to Go
