I knew they wouldn’t let us down!
Nebraska DHHS reports that an 11-year old girl from Douglas County was left by her mother today at Bergan Mercy Hospital. No details. She is the 5th child this week to find a new home at a Nebraska hospital.
Only one more to go and we’ll hit 30! The weekend, with its leisure time activities, usually marks an upturn in dumps. Hey! let’s take a drive in the country!
UPDATES:
Nebraska and Indiana officials spent the day discussing the “best options” for the 8-year old boy left at Bergan Mercy yesterday. Late afternoon they announced that the boy will be returned to Indiana and placed in the custody of The Indiana Department of Children’s Services while the investigation continues.
And remember the poor rejected adoptee from Michigan? The Detroit Free Press reports that his adoptive father, Nathaniel Martin, (earlier referred to as Terrence) has regained custody of his two biological children, but the adopted siblings remain in foster care. Their adoptive mother, Teri Martin, who dumped her son and claimed she was forced to adopt him seven years ago so she could adopt his brother, is not allowed in the couple’s Southfield, Michigan home while the petition of neglect filed against her remains unresolved.
DR. LAURA AND DR. PHIL
Gee, would you be surprised to learn that these media whores support unregulated child dumping and want YOU to meet them at your local dumpster…er…I mean hospital.
Dr. Laura’s, in her incredibly stupid November 4 blog , manages to exhibit a cellular ignorance of baby abandonment in general, “safe haven” laws and adoption in particular, and to insult Nebraska parents and guardians who have utilized this odious law to boot, implying that they are drug addicts, alcoholics, and mentally ill. Apparently in a moment of lucidity between pipes, these incapables have gotten it together enough to drive to the nearest hospital and save a life. The fact is, though I disagree with their decision to use LB 157, none of the people who have utilized this ill-conceived law appear to be genuine knuckle-dragging tweakers and winos. (though a couple lack common sense). Enough newspaper articles have appeared to indicate that “safe haven” consumers are well-intentioned but desperate people who have reached the end of their rope with state and private agency screw-you services that offer plenty of family help on paper, but don’t deliver the goods. (Here is a good example. Also read Lavennia Coover’s experience and her letter to the Omaha World-Herald in which the mother of #13 describes her frustration with the child welfare system and the whole “safe haven” procedure. )
Read Dr. Laura pontificate:
I had fits hearing criticism that this is abandonment or passing on responsibility. Children in the hands of parents addicted to drugs or alcohol, suffering from various mental illnesses and overwhelmed, barely functional and generally desperate, or simply unwilling are at great risk – and if even one of them has the compassion and good sense to make use of a safe-haven…then we have saved a life…not only from death…but from abuse and a childhood leading only to troubles and problems.
Society is always better off when unwanted children have opportunities with adoptive families, quality foster-families, or placement with relatives who might not even have known there was a problem. These children will have a better chance to grow up more adjusted, and that will obviously minimize bad “acting out” (sexual or criminal variety) or substance abuse to quell emotional pain.
Unfortunately, because of criticism aimed at parents who take advantage of protecting their children rather than harming them, the Governor of Nebraska, Dave Heinemen, is calling a special session of the legislature to change the state’s unique safe-haven law – amending it so that it applies only to infants up to 3 days old. I believe this is a HUGE mistake.
Not to be out done, Dr. Phil, went on TV today and recommended that stressed-out parents drop off their kids at dump-friendly environments. Due to the vagaries of my TV, I was unable to watch the show, but you can see a trailer and “Dr. Phil Uncensored” here. I should have a copy of the show next week and have a better idea of what went down. Reportedly, the show was emotionally manipulative and abusive. Included was a tired-out young single mom who Phil thinks would be better off as a perky birthmother if only she’d be unselfish enough to toss her kids into the adoption spammer and get a life.
Just what we’ve come to expect from America’s favorite TV do-gooder.
How odd. I’ve long held a theory that some male anti-abortion types are that way because they cannot imagine themselves as a pregnant woman, but can imagine how they’d “feel” if they were an embryo facing abortion.
But here we see the opposite: people who are all for this because they can’t imagine how, say, an eight-year-old child feels. Can’t parent? Just dump the thing! Somebody else will be thrilled to do a better job of raising it. To hell with your responsibility to your own flesh and blood; to hell with the thousands of kids in the system already crying out for good homes.
I couldn’t stand to watch Dr. Phil (I never can); did he bother to even look for evidence that these laws has ever saved one baby?
Laurel
Both these self-appointed “experts” have left me cold on every issue they speak to. This one is no different. If NotDr. Laura and Dr. Ill couldn’t find a way to grab the spotlight, they would be bereft. Poor things. They have both made themselves the champions of infant adoption and the judges of the single, young and financially deprived mother. Of course, their credibility is in the toilet.
EWWWWWWW!! Dr. Phil and Laura, two of the biggest assholes in the universe. Depressing to see them on the wrong side of yet another adoption issue. But not surprising.
Pixiecorpse, I think you are on to something that rabid anti-abortion males identify with the fetus, and also fear “murdering” all-powerful mothers.
The reason they don’t identify with the kids who are dumped is that they are now in Adoption Fairyland, where the kids are getting “saved” for a “better life” and anyhow they are just the product, not people with feelings.
Strange how that identification switches, isn’t it? Not to mention that nobody wants to adopt dumped pre-teens and teens, who are the bottom of the line of “damaged goods”. But in Adoption Fairyland, it is a perpetual Shirley Temple movie with nothing but “forever family” happy endings. Bleccchh!
Oh god, I saw that episode last night and it made me physically ill. The poor girl, while obviously not the brightest as she got pregnant at 16 by a one night stand, and then didn’t get the birth control memo and got pregnant with a second one night stand baby when she was 19….but the bottom line was she loved her little girls but had in her mind that she was not being a good mother to them (likely family/friends telling her that single moms aren’t good parents and her lil girls would be better off with someone else!) and wanted to “give them up” aka abandon them. Dr. Phil just told her that she needed to make a decision of either keep the kids or give them up —- not once did he suggest alternatives like support groups or any other resource to help her to raise her girls and go back to school!!!
Robin’s right, Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura have no right to be on TV telling people who to solve their problems in a mere 30 minutes!! They’re condescending, arrogant, and manipulative. Everything is about them, and they even use their guests as a means to elevate their own egos.
The problem, in my eyes is that these safe haven laws are so attractive b/c our gov’t and our society does little to assist the parents and families who end up in these situations. Everybody knows these safe haven’d kids are going to end up as failures to the system, thrown into foster care until they’re 18 and then dumped yet again.
The children are certainly not being thought of to be treated like a bag of trash. I’m not a fan of Drs. Laura and Phil and never will be now that I know that they support this way of getting rid of children no longer wanted.
Agencies are definitely failing to not help with the needs of those who think that they can no longer care for their children or maybe just don’t want to. Perhaps they are just not reaching out to let people know that there is help available without treating their children like this. Then to listen to national TV and be advised by Dr. Laura or Dr. Phil that this is the way to go is just pitiful.
Googly eyed Phil and schreeching banshee Dr. Laura are a scourge upon the nation.
Kippa
Brought to you by the “adoption culture” that is thriving in U.S.
Not sure what to do to keep your family together? Just dump ’em, no biggee.
The more they promote adoption, safe-havens, and other any other form of legalized abandoment, the more dumped children we will see. It’s the law of unintended consequences.
And the older childen will most likely become permanent members of the foster care club. Our society is completing failing families.
Maryanne,
Fairyland! I of all people should have known. 😉
Laurel
Well that’s about the last picture I want to see on my screen in the morning pre-coffee. Seriously Marley, where’s my “Not appropriate for those pre-coffee” warning?
Yes, America’s professional busy-body media class is gearing up into full court press as we prepare to go into the special session. Is anyone the least bit surprised?
Media manufactured “public pressure” and “public opinion” in the form of letters and polling had to be shaped to provide cover fro what comes next.
I saw the remarkably predictable Phil the shill festival of idiocy.
When you see the piece you’ll understand the way Phil by and large left it to others to do some of the real dirty work berating the potential “dumper” mom in question, with “it’s not about you anymore” type soundbytes.
Complete disingenuous those, as for the womyn in question, (whom Phil of course insisted upon calling a “child”,) she was very clear in that many of her reasons for considering surrendering her kids were that they needed more than she could provide them and she wanted what was best for them.
None-the-less, she was recast as selfish, and ready to go over to abusive behavior at any moment! She was falsely protrayed as the kind of “soon to be abusive” mother kids MUST be protected from- via dumping.
After all, so much of the dump narrative relies upon making dumping look ‘positive’ as compared to ~worse things that can, AND LIKELY INEVITABLY WILL! happen~. In other words lies about non-existent potential future events, to make child abandonment look good in some mythical cost benefit analysis against the non-existent.
Then you’ve got professional propagandists “Laura” bloviating-
Society is always better off when unwanted children have opportunities with adoptive families, quality foster-families, or placement with relatives who might not even have known there was a problem.
Is it?
Is it really?
Is society REALLY “always better off” when kids are redistributed?
Think about that for a moment.
Or do kids, particularly now deemed “unwanted” older kids, often simply languish once decoupled from parents and guardians, awaiting a next situation that often times never comes?
She’d rather focus on what she views as best for “society” or idealized situations, rather than any form of practical application and what kids actually endure.
She argues what she thinks what makes “society” better off,but what about the kids and parents and guardians- they real question here is are THEY better off?
Is it “always better off” for the kids themselves?
Keep in mind that the dump laws were sold based on rhetoric such as “if it saves just one” in state after state. So, what if these dumps laws harm “just one”? Are legislators going to rush to pass legislation based upon such? Somehow I doubt it.
Are the kids always better off?
Well, you’d have to actually talk with the kids themselves. and that’s hardly what “Laura” and her ilk want. It would require actually listening to some of those who might just disagree with her and it would require mean that their opinions (what with being the real experts on this and all) might actually matter.
Her equation takes the long term interests of, and the cost benefit analysis to those most directly affected, completely out of the equation.
Handy that, for propaganda purposes anyway.
These are America’s professional know nothings with audiences aimed at overwhelming political discourse.
Lost under the jackboots of such, are the voices of the directly affected-
*the parents, who far from her true to form recasting as various forms of what she deems social pariahs are in fact people who by and large care deeply about their kids and want to see them get what they need,
*and the kids themselves, who more often than not are treated as simply voiceless objects to be moved about at whim.
The one notable exception of course being the pregnant 14-year old Nebraska abandonee that Marley also blogged about whose words bear repeating, over and over again-
“I don’t want anything to happen to kids like it happened to me,”
Perhaps these two busybodies would care to take a chair and listen to her about what legalized child abandonment schemes actually mean in practice… nah, it’d never happen, it would mean they’d actually to have to grow ears to go with those big mouths of theirs.
Both these media “Dr.’s” make me want to throw up every time I hear them spewing their so-called professional advice. Reading this just adds to the nausea. Dr. Phil has given some of the worst advice I’ve ever heard (if/when I actually leave him on long enough to hear him give it). It’s no wonder he’s clueless on this topic as well.
He really needs to shut up and stick to his specialty. Oh, what is that anyway? /sarcasm