Earlier this month I read about a baby boy in new Mexico who was found in a dumpster. I’m pretty solid when it comes to controlling my emotions. It comes with the territory of working in journalism and nonfiction. You get a bit desensitized, but this hit me hard.
Why?
Because the baby had been thrown away in a black garbage bag and was lying in trash for 6 hours before some dumpster divers saved its life. Those people had no idea what they would find, and without them, death was surely eminent. The mother was an 18 year old young lady who didn’t even tell her parents she was pregnant.
She had options, but probably didn’t know about them, or didn’t want to deal with it. Either way she has been charged with attempted murder, and rightly so.
Then a week later a baby was found dead in a duffel bag left out in the snow outside of a fire station in Chicago. It was lying under the Safe-Haven site sign, so the person who abandoned it probably thought the child would be safe, but without notification or a person-to-person transfer, the little boy froze to death.
I’m a mother of 4 children. I also had an abortion when I was a teenager and suffer from abortion-regret. Maybe that’s why this hits so close to home, but I wanted to find a way to use these horrific situations to help others prevent similar tragedies. The first thing I thought of was my experiences volunteering for the St. Louis Crisis Nursery.
Then I did a little search and found out that less than half of the states in the U.S. have these facilities. This piece will hopefully spark more involvement and efforts to found more crisis nurseries for parents and caregivers who are at the end of their rope. Just a safe home for babies and children to go no matter what the situation is.
I always consider myself lucky to have been born and raised in Missouri. We have so many great resources that I didn’t even realize other states were lacking, even just facilities like a Crisis Nursery. But hopefully just passing on the idea will spark action.
Jessica Marie Baumgartner 