Unwanted Baby Pickup Service?

Don't Want Your Baby? In Massachusetts U.S.A.,  Just Call the New 'Abandon Your Baby Pickup Service'

December , 2007 updated October 24, 2019

All US states have laws allowing anyone to turn over a newborn baby ( even a full grown youth, in many cases, when these laws came out) to the state... no questions asked.

"Unwanted Baby Deposit Box"   Massachusetts, USA  Bill HB 92

This bill expands the existing "Safe Havens Law." The proper name is "The Baby Abandonment Law." The current law allows any person to drop off a baby less than 7 days of age at a hospital, police station or fire station  -  no questions asked. Under HB 92, abandonment sites would be increased to include any "emergency respondent" to a 911 call. Great, now a baby pick-up service.

Similar laws now exist in all US states, so a lot of American people think they are a good idea. The purpose is to provide an alternative for desperate young women who might otherwise leave their unwanted baby in a dumpster in the middle of winter. What a bad idea. American statistics show that number of abandoned babies has increased in the last 20 years since these laws were passed.

The states emphasize that the process is totally anonymous. Illinois is typical. Their website says, "… you can walk away with no questions asked…. The baby will be cared for and placed in a loving home for adoption. No attempt whatsoever will be made to contact you. No crime will have been committed. This is a TRULY safe process."

Whatever happened to parental responsibility ... you know  ... that concept that requires you to pay child support even if you never get to see the child? Does it apply only to men?

The masculist movement advocates for gender equality with women and "paper abortions" for men. You can't force a woman to become a mother against her will. She can choose abortion, no matter what her circumstances. She can choose abandonment to the province/territory and the police in Canada have usually not bothered to find the father even though they have the power to investigate the Criminal Code of Canada offence of child abandonment. A new mother can choose to abandon the baby  to be adopted even when she knows the father wants to raise the child. In doing so she avoids paying child support to the father.

You can't force a man in Canada to become a parent against his will. Canadian courts will not order a father to parent his own child should he wish to not become a parent

"Paper abortions" for men is about gender equality. You can't force

What if someone proposed a law that said any dad who did not want to pay child support could just drop the baby off?  I can just imagine testimony for such a bill at a legislative hearing: "Yes, Mr. Chairman, we need this bill so that fathers who don't want to pay child support won't throw the baby in a dumpster. After all, some of them are desperate, you know."

So think about these scenarios:

a)      Unmarried mom drops off baby anonymously without informing dad, who is a fit parent and eager to raise the child. So much for fathers' rights. So much for baby's rights to know his parents, to be raised by a biological parent, to remain out of the foster care and adoption system, and to know his medical history (increasingly important in these days of genetic medicine.)

b)      Married mom drops off the baby anonymously without informing dad, who is a fit parent and eager to raise the child, and disappears.

c)      Dad drops off the baby anonymously without informing mom, then disappears, thus dispensing with the need to pay child support. (Somehow I don't think the authors of this bill thought of this one.)

Canadian Children's Rights Council - OPINION / COMMENTARY

Child's Rights Violated.

Whether or not a woman wants her baby, the child abandonment laws of Canada give leverage to police for the purpose of finding both parents of the newborn baby.  It is important that the child's identity be established and abandonment time may be the only time to find both parents.

Few newborns are abandoned in Canada

Canada's doesn't need child abandonment laws.

In Canada, the usual groups that want baby abandonment laws are those relgious organizations or their fronts selling it as an alternative to abortion. They have had publicity for babies found from decades ago in old buildings and have hidden the death dates and/or deceptively used such cases without stating the death date.