What responsibility????

As you have probably seen by now, Nebraska had adopted a safe-haven law that allowed parents to abandon their children in specified places. The kicker is that you could abandon your children up to 18 years of age. One noted example was a man that dropped off his seven children right after the law was put into affect because he could not handle the pressure of being a single parent.

Now, the Nebraska legislature, in a tremendous stroke of genius, wants to specify the age of the children that you can legally abandon. The law was intended to stop the proliferation of the 'dumpster baby', and I guess the Nebraska legislature did not foresee the extent to which people woudl go to in order to dump off kids of all ages.

There is so much wrong with this line of thinking that I do not know where to start. First and foremost, it is the duty of parents to care for their children. Is it always easy and pleasant? Absolutely not. But that does not mean that I should just disregard my responsibility as a parent when life gets tough. That is a part of life. No one promised it would be easy.

Second, I realize women have children for one reason or another and then give them up for adoption. This is completely different. There is no abandonment when it comes to adoption. They realize that they are not able to give the child the care that is needed as a parent, and they want the child to be raised by those who can give them what is needed. This is generally not an easy decision for someone to make. These folks are not 'test-driving' the child to see if they like being a parent and then 'trading in' the child for a different lifestyle. Rather, they are thinking of the needs of the child (for the most part).

Third, the stories we here of 'dumpster babies' are heart-breaking. But they are, by no means, commonplace. If we would teach people about the dignity of human life instead of forcing the idea of abortion on people, maybe these things would not happen. After all, this 'dumpster baby' syndrome is not really that much different than abortion. The only difference is the timing of the infanticide. The act itself is still basically the same.

Yes, these situations should not happen. However, many of these young women having these children and dumping them somewhere do not know any better. They were not brought up to know better. It is the society that we live in. Personally, it is just downright sad (almost maddening) that we as a society do not teach our children to know better. We tell them that it is better to be safe than it is to abstain. The last time I checked, those who abstain have a much lower pregnancy rate than those who practice safety.

Ultimately, this is about personal responsibility. No one wants to be responsible for the consequences of their own actions. There are many prevalent examples of this in today's society (mortgage foreclosures, credit crisis, etc.). We want someone else to bail us out because we do not want to take responsibility for our own decisions.