Just discovered this story from CBS2 San Diego:
SAN DIEGO — A homeless teenage woman’s nine-day-old baby was taken away from her after sheriff’s deputies spotted the child in her mother’s shopping cart.I found the story on an abortion-advocates' blog, where it was upheld as an example of how pro-lifers supposedly put babies above women. The blogger implied that the presumed pro-life deputy's action was self-defeating; it was no use taking the baby when the teen, with no education on contraception or abortion, would simply have more babies.
A minister alerted deputies to the 9600 block of Campo Road about 8:50 p.m. Friday to see about the baby, who was traveling with her mother and 52-year-old grandmother, also homeless.
The family was carrying all it owned in two shopping carts, after the 19-year-old woman and baby was evicted from a cheap area motel.
Deputy took the baby to the Polinsky children’s center.
Deputies tried for hours to find shelter for the women but were unsuccessful.
The woman, who cried for the baby’s loss, eventually just continued on their way.
Knowing the work that pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life organizations do to help poor and homeless moms, I think that assertion is just plain silly.
To me, the deputies' actions reflect a culture-of-death mentality, where poor people are viewed as "human weed crop[ping] up that spread so fast in this sinister struggle for existence, that the overworked [social-services] committee becomes exhausted, inefficient, and can think of no way out."
The baby, in the deputies' eyes, was worth saving because it smelled nice, wasn't addicted to drugs or alcohol, and was salvageable — the air of poverty had not yet stuck to it. It had not yet acquired the ignorance and willful indolence that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger believed was characteristic of the teeming unwashed masses.
Whatever the deputies' motivation, taking the baby without providing shelter for the mother and grandmother is an utterly despicable act. I think that's something on which we can all agree.
