Greiner Grinds Her Teeth Over 7th Heaven
The Issue of Privacy Ms. Greiner is extremely clever in the way she "plays dumb" about the implications of guaranteeing a woman privacy. How could a woman "sign" a piece of paper and still have her anonymity? If a woman is in a panic and doesn't want to be identified by people who may be in the emergency room, is it logical to think that she will quietly sit and fill out a medical history form?
As for Ms. Greiner's psychological profiling of women who abandon children or commit neonaticide, there's a major problem. These are, by all accounts, two different sorts of women - if one could even begin to categorize the complex personalities, contexts and stories of all the women faced with the challenge into even two pigeonholes.
And Ms. Greiner is right on at least one count: some women will continue killing their babies or abandoning them unsafely, despite these laws. No laws are perfect, and this is especially so in a society that grants people wide latitude in terms of personal liberty, like the United States. Those who support Safe Haven laws do not do so based on the illusion that every baby that would have been threatened will be saved, but rather because they know that some babies will be saved. As many state legislators have said, "If just one baby is saved because of the law we are passing, it will be worth it." And before long it will be clear that at least one baby has been saved in every state that has passed a Safe Haven law.
Ms. Greiner says, correctly, that some women are capable of making rational decisions. That is precisely the point of Safe Haven laws: they provide an option for women who rationally decide that they need a totally anonymous plan that will keep their babies safe. As for the women who are irrational, one can only hope that a few will, because of the option being available, choose it over the dumpsters.
Brenda Hampton of "7th Heaven" is taken to task by Ms. Greiner, who says the show explaining how Safe Haven works in California, America's most populous state, "failed miserably." Ms. Greiner protests too much: if the show had not been a powerful statement for Safe Haven laws, if it had not humanized the tortures that people go through when they are faced with difficult decisions, and if it had not been such an accurate lesson for young people watching, the Bastard Nation "Executive Chair" would have stayed on her couch and away from her keyboard. No, Ms. Hampton did a beautiful job of presenting a gripping drama.
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