The 35th "safe haven" child has been dropped off at a hospital in Nebraska.
LINCOLN -- A 5-year-old boy from Sarpy County was left last night at Immanuel Medical Center in Omaha -- the 35th under Nebraska's safe-haven law.
The boy was left at the hospital by his mother around 9 p.m., says Todd Landry, director of children and family services for the Department of Health and Human Services.
I can't even imagine how the conversation goes.
Get in the car. We're going to the hospital so I can abandon you.
Nebraska will change its law soon enough so that it only applies to infants, but this temporary anomaly has laid bare a deeper problem: parents who just don't have much use for their kids.
I hear excuses about economic necessity in some of these cases, but I'm not buying it. America has a very generous safety net for poor families with small children. They get free education, free school lunches and often free school breakfasts as well, welfare, food stamps, and free medical care. Through private donations, it's easy to get free backpacks, school supplies, free clothing, and just about anything else a kid might need. This is before you even consider friends and family, who are usually the primary safety net.
Besides, no matter how tight the finances are, most parents would crawl across broken glass before they'd abandon their five-year-old.
Here is the real question: What is the solution when parents don't love their children enough?
It's not hypothetical. Today and throughout human history, too many children have struggled to answer that question with their very lives.
There are no easy answers. Government child-rearing certainly is not the answer. In most cases, children are better off in their homes -- if their parents will have them.
If there is an answer in this imperfect world, it lies in the human heart.
If people love enough -- if they love their neighbors as themselves -- if they love their children as they love themselves -- then child abandonment is impossible.
My thoughts return to the church, where that kind of love for one another -- the Golden Rule -- is front and center. That kind of love should be front and center in every house of worship.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that churches, and religion in general, are under all-out assault today.
There is always a struggle for the heart and soul of humanity. On the outcome of this struggle rest the hopes and dreams of humanity, and the joy and misery of children.
I agree that churches should be a part of the solution, and for most of the churches I've visited, I would say that is the case, but what we need is more birth control, more counseling, and more just plain teaching people that kids aren't objects to throw away when they don't want/can't afford them.
Also, I'm curious as to why you think that churches/religion are under attack?
Posted by: Crysck2002 | November 21, 2008 at 07:53 PM