7th Heaven Goes to Hell
No Blame, No Shame, No Name Unlike laws that regulate adoption and abortion with their mandated "informed consent," legalized baby abandonment requires not even a signed piece of paper. "No Blame, No Shame, No Name." In some states, Safe Haven providers are legally barred from asking the identity of the baby and abandoner (not always the mother-as in the 7th Heaven case), offering medical treatment, taking a social or medical history, or suggesting counseling and referrals. A young woman, even minutes after birth, clearly in medical or mental distress, can simply walk through the door, leave her baby, and walk back out with no questions asked.
Women in deep pregnancy denial, and/or living with substance abuse, domestic violence, shame, and/or mental illness are the usual perpetrators of child abandonment and neonaticide, and no amount of Safe Haven laws or "7th Heaven" bromides will ease this harsh reality. Women who abandon their newborns, and sometimes kill them, will continue to do so because baby saving is not on their agenda. The baby as a living being does not exist to them.
Conversely, if the newspaper comments of doctors, police, behaviorists, and social service professionals are correct, the few women who have utilized Safe Haven drop-offs are scared, confused, and uninformed about options open to them such as government assistance, temporary foster care, or legal relinquishment and adoption options that Safe Haven providers are often not permitted to suggest. Moreover, they are in no danger of harming their newborns and are capable of making rational decisions about the future of themselves and their children once panic and confusion subside.
"7th Heaven" creator/producer/writer Brenda Hampton says that her mission "is to be harmless, rather than helpful." In her attempt to spin positive on baby dumps, she apparently decided to try both and failed miserably.
The Enemy Within, with its advocacy of secret pregnancy and anonymous abandonment, potentially harms the physical and mental health of young teen viewers in crisis pregnancies, and does nothing to encourage responsible behavior towards themselves and their unborn children.
Ultimately, Safe Haven advocates view secret pregnancy as live baby versus dead baby, when the reality is quite different. Safe Haven programs are anti-child, anti-woman, and anti-mother. Baby dump laws establish a government-created class of individuals without identity, heritage, or genetic history. They discourage girls and women from seeking pre- and post-natal care as well as mental health counseling. They dehumanize and socially obliterate the very children and women they purport to help, turning the abandoned infant and her mother into little more than an ahistorical commodity. Some might even die. In the end, the programs only exacerbate the problems that lead to abandonment.
The Camdens deserve better. Children deserve better. We, as a society, deserve better
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