I've never heard of safe baby havens in the US, but I'd assume they'd be right-wing supported on account of how that means the mother won't have an abortion.
Actually I feel like it's in the Catholic Church's wheelhouse, more than aligning with left-wing or right-wing. It's more compassionate than the right-wing ever is, but it's very pro-life as well, which is pretty much where the nuns stand.
My impression, based on what I've read, is that in the US, this kind of service is often promoted as a sort-of meeting ground that both pro- and anti-choicers can support. Esp. in terms of the 'no-fault baby drop' laws, they generally enjoy support from both the far right and the center-left in a given legislature.
Not having read the article, is there a big racial/ethnic subtext to the whole question of men dropping the babies off? I.e. baby dropped off by swarthy guy and OMG!1! Muzlimz are dropping off babiez without the mom's consent!
Practically, it seems like you'd be running a big risk of a kidnapping charge if the mother was of age, and wanted the baby, and had any kind of agency and access to official help.
Unless you're confident you can suppress her going to any authority about it.
4. The article doesn't say that there's a racial/ethnic subtext to this, so I wouldn't know. There are obviously ethnic associations with gender preference, which might explain some of it, but it isn't mentioned, so I wouldn't speculate if I were you.
6: Well, yeah, that's what I meant by agency.
7: I meant a subtext to the article itself.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but the gubmint in N. Europe really really wants citizens to have babies. So it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to posit unwanted baby=non-citizen parents
8.2. Possibly, but I think it's more about extreme poverty and religious bullying.
Actually I feel like it's in the Catholic Church's wheelhouse
Like an update of the infant on the convent doorstep with a "Please take care of my baby" note pinned to it.
The one baby dropoff place I know of is at a fire station. I guess that makes sense in that the place is staffed around the clock. It's at a pretty busy corner though; you'd have to wait until the middle of the night to stash your baby in the dropoff drawer if you didn't want anyone to see you.
The one baby dropoff place I know of is at a fire station.
That implies that it's supported by the city government, presumably (ideologically supported, not necessarily financially).
You never see Take-a-baby/Leave-a-baby trays anymore.
You never see Take-a-baby/Leave-a-baby trays anymore.
Now there's an idea. You could organise anonymous baby donations like the Secret Santa things in the office at Christmas.
"I'm sorry, but blue is not a form of transportation."
I've always thought that Ancient Greek infant exposure was essentially a take-a-baby leave-a-baby program.
DC has a "baby safe haven" law, under which one can drop an unwanted baby off at a fire or police station or a hospital.
What's the argument against them? That you may regret dropping off your baby?
9 doesn't make any sense to me; I read the panic as citizens not wanting babies; the hordes are presumably raising them (chaining their wimmenz to the hearth in the act). Baby hatches would reduce the effort required by etiolated, decadent citizens to repopulate the volk? Who's raising the hatched babies, though? Robots!
I've always thought that Ancient Greek infant exposure was essentially a take-a-baby leave-a-baby program.
Yes, but the take-a-baby side was enhanced by the fact that the kid was then yours to exploit for life as a slave. The damn liberals went and ruined all that.
Who's raising the hatched babies, though?
Leda, presumably. Zeus was always an unreliable parent.
Possibly, but I think it's more about extreme poverty and religious bullying.
Isn't oppressive religious male family members supposed to imply recent Muslim immigrants?
Isn't oppressive religious male family members supposed to imply recent Muslim immigrants?
Maybe, but in central Europe it could equally imply conservative Catholics who've been there forever.
18: I always thought the (conservative) argument against baby drop-offs was that they provide an "easy" (i.e., insufficiently shameful) way out of unintended pregnancy, and thereby encourage casual sex and sex before marriage?
I don't think there's a huge queue of tribal Muslims trying to shoulder their way into the Czech Republic. No historical connection, for a start, and probably not the easiest place to put down new roots.
18: What's the argument against them? That you may regret dropping off your baby?
There isn't really any argument against them, except that they should be supported by a robust contraceptives program, along with available abortion services, and in the event of an unsupportable birth, more support for parents in need than what we have.
There isn't really any argument against them
The argument against them by the UN agency cited in the link is that they violate the right of the child to know who they are. You might suggest that this is a first world problem, and I'd be inclined to agree, but we're talking about first world countries here (Germany, the United States, etc.)
Are closed book adoptions legal in Europe?
28. I've no idea - there are about 30 countries in Europe. I believe they're illegal in Britain, though that's quite recent.
I think we have safe havens at every hospital around here. Periodically they get used, and there's a news story. Occasionally they don't -- just before Christmas . Luckily she survived.
As far as I can tell, the safe havens are a cross-partisan issue -- they appeal equally to people on the right and left who want a quick-fix solution to a rare but vivid problem, and like having ability to pity someone else.
It's kind of like the anti-human trafficking efforts. Not wrong, and certainly better to do than not to do, but very focused on a narrow narrative of a vulnerable person, with no willingness to examine the larger context.
Now with working link:
I think we have safe havens at every hospital around here. Periodically they get used, and there's a news story. Occasionally they don't -- just before Christmas a newborn was found outside in frigid weather. Luckily she survived.
As far as I can tell, the safe havens are a cross-partisan issue -- they appeal equally to people on the right and left who want a quick-fix solution to a rare but vivid problem, and like having ability to pity someone else.
It's kind of like the anti-human trafficking efforts. Not wrong, and certainly better to do than not to do, but very focused on a narrow narrative of a vulnerable person, with no willingness to examine the larger context.
19: Who's raising the hatched babies, though?
Presumably, old people who regret giving up their baby when they were younger. Circle be unbroken and all that jazz.
they violate the right of the child to know who they are
Whoa. I don't know what to make of this. I'm an adopted child myself, and don't know who my biological parents are. I don't conceive of it as a right.
I ... think I'm not going to argue about the UN's perspective on these matters.
28: No, because they reward you for your memorization ability, instead of your underlying understanding of the material.
Well, baby hatches or safe havens would certainly seem preferable to a dumpster, which is what generally seems to happen in their absence.
31.3: This is interesting. What would you change about anti-trafficking efforts, and how would you like to see the larger context brought into play?
Nebraska had a broadly worded law granting safe haven for kids dropped at a hospital. Before they fixed the law, they got several teenagers.
33: I've mentioned before that we adopted our kids from Korea - my daughter wanted to meet her birth mom and we managed to travel back to Korea to do that. My son has declined even searching for his birth family (different from my daughter's), although we met his foster mother at the adoption agency in Seoul. We never really thought of a "right to know who they are ...."
37: We never really thought of a "right to know who they are ...."
I find it a very odd notion. Perhaps it comes chiefly from people who are raised by their biological parents and feel that that's extraordinarily important.
35: I'm going to play the annoying role of someone who disagrees but isn't going to look up the stats right now. There is minimal evidence that babies getting Safe Haven placement would otherwise have been hidden/smothered/left in dumpsters, though I'm sure that would be hard to come by anyhow. There is significant evidence in several states that adoption agencies are encouraging women to use Safe Haven laws to be able to ensure closed adoptions and/or disenfranchise birth fathers they don't want to deal with. In some areas, Safe Haven babies go into foster care and have expedited adoptions from there and in others, private agencies have paying families who adopt the babies.
We were asked if we'd be interested in being on the Safe Haven list and said no. We don't feel the urge for babies many other families have, plus the idea that there would be no hope of openness or access to prenatal or familial medical records was too intimidating. I definitely think of Safe Havens as a right-wing/Catholic thing here in the states.
The only person I know through adoption blogs who placed her baby via Safe Haven was doing it so she wouldn't have to tell the baby's dad she'd been pregnant. She had a change of heart of sorts and made sure the hospital social worker got her information, so she now has an open relationship with visits and so on.
But now I have to go shopping with Mara for a few hours (test-driving the Subaru!) and will try to be more informative when I return.
Perhaps it comes chiefly from people who are raised by their biological parents and feel that that's extraordinarily important.
I've met a few people who were adopted who went to extraordinary lengths to find their birth parents, and others who couldn't give a damn. I don't think you can generalise. I suppose giving people the right to know who their birth parents are doesn't compel them to exercise that right, so I don't see it does much harm.
I do know that in this country at least, the pro-information lobby was very vociferous and, as far as I'm aware, entirely made up of adopted people.
40: Right, some adopted people care to know, and others don't. I've met both kinds myself. I don't, in my own case, feel that knowing my biological parents adds anything to my knowledge of who I am. The people who raised and nurtured me made me who I am: they are my parents and grandparents.
Availability of information is fine, of course, if one wishes to pursue it. The view that being raised by non-biological parents is somehow deficient (because you don't know who you are) is entirely wrong.
I take it that the issue with the baby drops is the anonymity? It's not the turning over of the baby to non-biological parents, per se.
What would you change about anti-trafficking efforts, and how would you like to see the larger context brought into play?
1. Expand definition so that unaccompanied minors who are in situations of economic coercion are eligible for the same protections as trafficked or refugee minors.
2. Take a percentage of advertising and training dollars currently spent on trafficking awareness-raising efforts and direct them to enforcement efforts getting state and local authorities to comply with existing anti-discrimination laws (e.g. US Dept of Ed issued a "Dear Colleague" letter last year to school districts telling them not to bar children from enrolling, but problems are still widespread and No Child Left Behind is making it worse, because schools have incentives not to enroll kids who they *think* will have absence issues or low test scores.).
Also divert some of those resources to conducting DOJ investigation of local law enforcement violations of the trafficking laws (e.g. refusing to certify a victim as a victim because they don't fit a certain profile) and Civil Rights Act (eg language access issues that result in victims of crime getting arrested rather than perpetrators, especially in DV cases).
3. Reframe anti-trafficking materials to avoid polarizing people into "good victims" and "bad victims."
4. Get some celebrity or other high-profile person to do a barnstorming tour to all of those campus groups and others who are focused on trafficking, giving them an attention-grabbing 101-level workshop on American factors that drive other countries' migration, and US-created environments that create victims (HINT: immigrant detention centers and private prisons) and what US citizens who are concerned about vulnerable people can do to support system-level change that will protect them.
That's a start. I could come up with a lot more, but it would be more locality-specific.
One of the books Molly read--by an author associated with feminism and evolutionary theory I think--talked extensively about the use of baby hatches in early modern Europe. The take away was that all of these babies were actually dying of exposure. None were actually adopted, and the whole thing was a polite fig leaf put over the practice of infanticide.
After what happened in Thebes, you'd think all Europe would have learned not to half-ass infanticide.
they violate the right of the child to know who they are.
"Right"? Really? The DE's kid has always expressed very little interest and certainly doesn't think of it as a "right" he has and might exercise even when we encouraged some curiosity.
I don't even get what the right is exactly. The right to know your biological parents' names? The right to know their biological and disease history?
If I die, have I violated my kid's right to know me?
Things like family medical history, contact with collateral relatives (that is, should a parent who can't raise you unilaterally cut off any possible access to aunts and uncles, grandparents, siblings, or cousins?), ethnicity/national origin, all that sort of thing. My gut instinct is that if I were adopted, none of that would seem very important to me, but I know that in practice it is very important to some (although obviously not all) adoptees.
You're supposed to drown your kids and blame some guy from a minority group before you die.
The right to know their biological and disease history?
And cultural and personal history.
If I die, have I violated my kid's right to know me?
Unquestionably a capital offence.
45. Look, a queue of people who are adopted can step up one by one and say they aren't interested in knowing about their birth parents, and it make no difference. Nobody's forcing anybody to find their birth parents, any more than to do genealogical research. But if there are some people who actually do want to find out this stuff (goes the argument), they should be able to do so. That's all.
I just read Chris Y's actual link from the OP, and apologize for the fact that we've been rehearsing the same issues touched on there.
We're supposed to apologize for ignoring the links in the OP?
Philosopher Dav/id Vel/leman has a paper (requires academia.edu signin) that seems on point, though I don't care enough to read it--here's Brig/house from CT discussing it (though the CT link is broken):
The paper is an extended argument for the wrongness of having a child by an anonymous donor (including by an anonymous surrogate mothers). The argument goes something like this (sorry David, I'm trying to be terse): children have an extremely powerful interest in knowing who their genetic forebears were, because that knowledge plays a vital role in their identity formation (not, interestingly, because it plays the more mundane role of giving you information about your probabilities with respect to health prospects, etc). People who deliberately have children via anonymous donors thus deliberately have children for whom a vital interest cannot be met. So they do a wrong.
Nobody's forcing anybody to find their birth parents, any more than to do genealogical research. But if there are some people who actually do want to find out this stuff (goes the argument), they should be able to do so. That's all.
Well, no, this stuff does very directly take away the ability of pregnant-folks-who-don't-want-to-be-parents to divest themselves of all connection with the future child without actually destroying it. The right to know is not a simple "everyone wins, nobody loses" policy.
54. Hence the words in parentheses - "goes the argument". In the case where the child is consumed with the need to find out all about her genetic/cultural/etc. origins and the parent doesn't want to know, I have no idea who holds ethical trumps. Hard cases make bad law, but it isn't even obvious to me which would be the right easier case to choose. (Arguments from subjective preference are disallowed.)
How does such a right affect the UN's position on the permissibility of anonymous artificial insemination? (If they have one.)
that is, should a parent who can't raise you unilaterally cut off any possible access to aunts and uncles, grandparents, siblings, or cousins?
The daughter my aunt gave up for adoption reconnected with her at some point a few years ago, and seems not to like her very much, but for a while seemed to feel entitled to invite her family to my parents' house for dinner semi-regularly. This was kind of an uncomfortable situation.
50: I can't see where a baby has a cultural history. The DE's kid had, based on observation, a Korean mother and African (most likely Afro-American) father and would not have been very acceptable in Korean society. As it is, he's culturally WASP/Jewish but doesn't look like a stereotype of either.
53: Doesn't actually appear to require a signin. What is academia.edu, anyway?
55: In the case where the child is consumed with the need to find out all about her genetic/cultural/etc. origins and the parent doesn't want to know, I have no idea who holds ethical trumps.
The biological parent does, in my view. My subjective perspective aside, there is far too much weight placed in western societies on biological heritage.
In the phrase "the right of the child to know who they are," is the "they" referring to the parents or the child? If the latter, the phrasing seems kind of contentious to me.
Oh, I assumed the "they" referred to the child. But maybe not. The link in the OP says:
the practice "contravenes the right of the child to be known and cared for by his or her parents"
with various other language about knowing the identity of the parents and being able to maintain personal relations with them.
Chris y gets it exactly right in 55. The adopted person I know best IRL is utterly content with her adoptive family and has no urge (she's now nearly 50) to find her biological parents. The only reason I even know how she feels is that her s.o. occasionally mentions it -- HE'S curious, and can't understand why she isn't.
On the other hand, I've known of others who felt profoundly alienated and disenfranchised by their adoptive parents (often white parents who adopted nonwhite kids and shoehorned them into "normality" without any breathing room for their cultural heritage), and see the state's efforts to block birth parent search as another instance of racialized disempowerment.
It's not an easy call.
On the other hand, I've known of others who felt profoundly alienated and disenfranchised by their adoptive parents (often white parents who adopted nonwhite kids and shoehorned them into "normality" without any breathing room for their cultural heritage)
Again I am confused by the word "cultural" here. If these nonwhite kids have never known anyone from their birth family or their birth family's community, what you're talking about is nothing more than their "genetic" heritage.
I assume that the UN position is originally about stopping this sort of thing (link to Wikipedia article on the Australian Stolen Generations for those who pride themselves on not following links; if you don't know what that is, be a devil and read the link.) Obviously a small number of American/German middle class adoptions of unwanted babies can't be compared to such abuses, and nobody would want suggest otherwise, but you see why people want to be on their guard and have policies in place in case of need.
56 - we don't have anonymous sperm donation here in the UK any more. Friend of mine has a 10/11 year old by anonymous sperm donor and by the time they were thinking about having another baby, the law had changed. She felt it would be a bit weird to have one child who could track down his bio father, and one who couldn't.
I keep thinking this thread is about safe ways to drop babies.
I keep thinking this thread is about safe ways to drop babies.
When nobody's looking and you have ready access to a funny toy to distract them so they stop yelling.
67: I was thinking it was about eye drops which could be used on infants. But that may have been an intentional double entendre on heebie's part.
I used to have horrible fears about dropping a baby. I got over them after a few months.
64: It's not nearly that simple, partly because no matter how "color-blind" their parents think they are raising them, the children are still going to deal with a boatload of assumptions that wider society is going to offload on to them. Parents who never had to deal with those assumptions (::cough:: white privilege ::cough::) are not automatically going to be equipped to prepare or counsel their kids when they encounter them.
But to take an easy example, think of lactose intolerance or similarly genetically-linked medical conditions. There's no reason that a parent with a different genetic map couldn't successfully raise a child who has one of those conditions -- but it's not insane of the child to feel as though it would be comforting, interesting, or even suffering-reducing to talk to the people who DO share her heritage.
Parents of good faith can overcome these obstacles, just as biological parents everywhere overcome different obstacles. But in terms of understanding why an adopted person might *want* to access this knowledge, it helps to think of the cases where the bio parent might have failed to do so.
(My personal bite-the-tongue moment, which I'm sure I've shared here before, came when an adoptive white mother of a Guatemalan boy responded to his concern that other kids in kindergarten didn't look like him by pointing out the adopted Vietnamese boy in class. FAIL.)
Again I am confused by the word "cultural" here. If these nonwhite kids have never known anyone from their birth family or their birth family's community, what you're talking about is nothing more than their "genetic" heritage.
I think this is reductive. Heritage is purely genetic in the case of sperm/egg donation. When you were literally born to someone, you physically "came from them". The sense of heritage may be hard to define, and certainly lots of adoptees don't share it, but it's still understandable for there to be more to it emotionally than "they gave me my genes and that's it."
...why an adopted person might *want* to access this knowledge...
I can see "want". There's plenty of that to go around on all sides. It's "right" that I have a problem with.
73
I can see "want". There's plenty of that to go around on all sides. It's "right" that I have a problem with.
The language of "rights" is just a shorthand way of expressing society's rules. Society limits the injuries parents are allowed to inflict on their children and says children have a "right" not to be injured in ways outside these limits. Society can decide injuring children by depriving them of any contact with or knowledge of their parents is not allowed and hence that children have a "right" not to be so deprived.
64 is pretty problematic. Things like the Stolen Generations*, but also think about things like Francoist baby trafficking or the similar scandals in Latin America.
In general cutting people off from their history is a pretty horrible thing to do.
* which was an attempt at genocide, just to make clear the gravity of the issue there.
74: Any idea of how it works in practice? Can an 18YO give up a baby she absolutely positively does not ever want to have contact with? I can easily see a bunch of "rights" in potential conflict.
Is that a right though? That is, is there a right not to have any contact with your child? I don't see where this right arises from, and it would seem to cut against the argument that people have duties towards their children.
77: That's what I mean. I can see situations where one wouldn't want anything to do with a child one carried to birth. How are special circumstances like rape or incest handled if for some reason an abortion hasn't been performed?
76
Any idea of how it works in practice? Can an 18YO give up a baby she absolutely positively does not ever want to have contact with? I can easily see a bunch of "rights" in potential conflict.
I believe in the United States the trend has been towards making it easier for adoptive children to obtain information about their biological parents due primarily to lobbying from organizations of adopted children who want such information.
I blame Neil Young for the popularity of the dumpster baby meme.
Acquaintance FB status: "Never tell me that the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon." - Anonymous
That's not what that saying means, you dolt.
81: "What does it mean?" he said, begging the question.
You guess, and we can play hot-or-cold.
Because there are footprints on the moon, he knows not to expect much. Obviously, there are very tight limits in the face of that sort of powerful military/industrial/scientific power.
Re: anonymous adoption, I'm tempted to play devil's advocate here, but I won't, given that this can be a grave situation for some. I'll just repeat that access to abortion services (and contraception) should be expanded, along with new parents support.
I'll add, by the by, that I myself have absolutely no desire to be contacted by my biological parents -- my mother (adoptive) died a couple of years ago, and I have no wish for another -- and I tend to feel that adult children should have the same respect for their biological parents. But I gather that's viewed as harsh.
What in the fucking name of cockfuck is Heebie talking about.
87: a stupid quote that she saw on her facebook feed.
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Hey Moby, Stormcrow, other PA folks, this is pretty stunning. From the man who was Harrisburg's receiver (not clear if he was forced out):
I believe the disdain for the law is so embedded in Harrisburg's political culture that it constitutes a very insidious form of corruption. [...]
Many public officials and other powerful people take the position that "those city people voted for whom they voted, and they will have to live with the consequences." But the truth is that the average citizens on the streets of Harrisburg did not know about the depth of harmful acts by those they had elected.
They could not have understood there was a highly sophisticated, multi-hundred million dollar debt scheme going on, as shown now in the forensic audit....
They did not know (and the suburban residents did not know) that sewer customers were being overcharged and those monies were being diverted to other purposes. The people who did know what was going on were certainly not telling the people of Harrisburg about it.
And the citizens of Harrisburg were not the only ones in the dark. People in Jefferson County, Ala., in Wisconsin school districts and in hundreds of other communities nationwide are suffering the financial ravages caused by the unchecked greed of major financial institutions and their local enablers.
It is fundamentally unfair to inflict the nightmarish results of these decisions on the backs of the citizens of Harrisburg.
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I've been following that guy got a while. Not many people resign with hand-written notes to federal judges. Of course, Harrisburg can't pay in full. The only point is to inflict enough pain that vaguely insolvent cities like the one in which I'm sitting don't get ideas.
Of course, an op-ed like that coming from a Republican appointee is news.
The big thing here was to sell the parking but fortunately Chicago went first and our city council wouldn't buy it.
92: If I lived in Pennsylvania I wouldn't buy parking in Chicago either. What if you got towed? That would be such a hassle.
I've remarked, possibly elsewhere, that the Harrisburg situation reminds me of Lenin's theory of late capitalism*. The various bond holders are fighting to see that they are paid prior to the others because they know they can't all profit.
* Also in my comic book.
I think fights between different cohorts of creditors over the remaining assets of an insolvent entity significantly predate not only Lenin, but capitalism itself. Not that this means it's a bad analogy.
I might need a comic book that provides more background.
You could try ones with smaller word bubbles.
87: Jesus, hostile-pants. Go suck an egg.
So apparently to some people "The sky's the limit" doesn't mean "There is no limit"; it means "There is a clear and strict limit, and that limit is the sky".
Jesus Hostile-Pants didn't get as many disciples, but when he kicked the money-changers out of the Temple, they fucking well stayed out.
81 seems to have the potential for an amusing series of snow-clones, but I am not clever enough to think of one to start us off right now.
Never tell me to wish upon a star when the sun provides us with all the heat and light we need.
Never tell me that a stitch in time saves nine when the hem of His garment has saved millions.
If the fucking sun had a dimmer switch global warming wouldn't be an issue.
Never tell me that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush when we can surround our buildings with beautiful, bird-filled hedges.
If you think that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, you'll wind up with bird shit on your hand.
Right plus maybe a disease. Keep those nasty birds in the bushes where they belong.
Don't tell me that this is late stage capitalism unless you're handing me the keys to my new hovercraft.
I don't care if this isn't really a snow-clone, because snow-clone is just a word somebody made up.
Never tell me you're the wind beneath my wings when you're an airline.
You're the wind beneath my shorts if you're broccoli.
Isn't the sky limit moon thing just cliche inflation, like "giving 110%"? I kind of like it, it's bold. The sky may be the limit for you losers. I'm going to the moon.
112
Isn't the sky limit moon thing just cliche inflation ...
I think it's a joke .
112: you've always been poor at astronomy.
Don't tell me there are plenty of fish in the sea when I have like fifty cans of anchovies right here.
No, it is impossible that someone took a common cliche and expanded upon a tendentious reading of it in the attempt to make a lame joke.
(whistles quietly as he sneaks away)
I posted a stupid joke about road rage shootings to somebody's Facebook picture of their kid at camp. Does that make everything better?
One of the books Molly read--by an author associated with feminism and evolutionary theory I think--talked extensively about the use of baby hatches in early modern Europe. The take away was that all of these babies were actually dying of exposure. None were actually adopted, and the whole thing was a polite fig leaf put over the practice of infanticide.
I was about to mention that: it's "Mother Nature" by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
Not exposure, so much, but mortality in orphanages was around 80-90%. Polite excuse for infanticide, definitely.
And she has some interesting things to say about the changeling myth as well.
I will always and forever be amazed by girls and women who do not know they are pregnant until the baby appears. I know, rationally, it's because they are so freaking frightened and scared, but that is one hell of a self-preservation reaction.
Ignorance, presumably, rather than fear. That's abstinence-only education for you.
I think it's at least sometimes a real lack of symptoms. It's one of those things that's very unlikely, but very unlikely in the 'it's a big world, it's going to happen to someone' sense. If you get someone who starts out heavy, is carrying small, is used to irregular menstruation for whatever reason, and so on -- all the symptoms of pregnancy feel pretty unmistakable for anyone going through it, but they're all individually very variable. Someone who, through chance, gets the mildest possible version of all of the symptoms, and is heavy enough to hide the body-shape changes, might really have not that much to go on.
Ignorance, presumably, rather than fear. That's abstinence-only education for you.
As it happens, I just read this collection of stories (recommended!) by an apparently-famous German criminal defense lawyer; one of them deals with a teenage girl who, having been raped by a father's friend, is in denial up until giving birth. The story's narrator claims this happens about 300 times a year in Germany; some googling gives a similar number. I'm not sure how to partition out ignorance vs denial vs unusually asymptomatic, but I'm sure all three play their parts.
I also just watched Happiness, which was great. Magnolia, but with gallows humor instead of hope. The diner scene and the last father/son talk were wonderful.
Don't tell me to think outside the box when plenty of people have come up with great ideas outside of what we usually think of as boundaries.
Don't tell me to think outside the box when plenty of people have come up with great ideas outside of what we usually think of as boundaries dropped their babies off in boxes.
Don't tell me it's always darkest before the dawn because it's always darkest when I'm sitting alone in my room under the covers with all the lights turned off and she'll never come back, will she?
Don't tell me a stitch in time saves nine, because entailments tesseracts are bad, Mr. Cunningham.
Don't tell me that he who hesitates is lost, because I'm running late.
Don't tell me there's no I in team when there are two eyes in your face.
Don't tell me the early bird gets the worm, because DINOSAURS!!
Don't tell me most soft soap contains a great deal of lye, when ... I mean just don't tell me that.
Don't tell me it's no use crying over spilt milk when I'm trying to clean it up, over here. By diluting it with my tears.
Don't tell me "in for a penny in for a pound" when there are people who can lift up whole cars.
I never came back here to look up data that support what I was claiming, so if anyone actually cares I will.
(But I did come back here to say that I'm the greatly relieved owner of a Subaru Outback! The dealership let us drive it all weekend and I love having the back for groceries and am relieved we no longer have to let Mara talk to social workers since she's insisting on calling the wayback "my room." My mechanic said it's in very good shape and I'll sign the papers this afternoon. Now I can stop shaking and feeling sick to my stomach all the time! Thank you incredibly much to all the people here who helped me not freak out so much and make a good decision, and also to Lee, who was amazing on both those fronts.)
Don't tell me to be the change I want to see in the world, when change is a verb and I don't know how to be a verb.
Don't tell me to live each day as though it were my last when I had the runs yesterday.
136: Obviously what that means is if your purchase comes out to $19.83 and you hand the cashier a Jackson, then if you want the extra back, you should transform into a dime, a nickel, and two pennies.
67 I keep thinking this thread is about safe ways to drop babies & 69 I was thinking it was about eye drops which could be used on infants
I keep imagining a doll named Baby Safe Drops, more or less like Baby Alive but with more bounciness and/or padding.
It's all those things, and more! It's also like cough drops.
This is where I can confess that Mara was begging for a Baby Uh-Oh who creates dirty diapers and I told her no because I don't like that. (When Mara gets free rein on youtube, she likes to watch European doll commercials.)
It's also like cough drops a cartoon vault plummeting towards an oblivious infant.