Kill your baby, dump your baby ... or make sure s/he is safe and has a future

June 20, 2010

Kill your baby, dump your baby ... or make sure s/he is safe and has a future

Kill your baby, dump your baby ... or make sure s/he is safe and has a future

"When the girl-child that was buried alive,

Is asked for what crime she was slain?'

Al-Quran 81: 8-9

The baby Moses was placed in a reed basket and set adrift on the Nile -- to be found and brought up by Pharaoh's daughter. That was very lucky!

In Islamic countries -- with their strict sexual morality and enforced segregation of unmarried men and women -- there is obviously no sex outside marriage, and therefore no problem of unwanted babies. Theoretically.

So why is it that, in Malaysia alone, there are scores of babies abandoned every year? Left in secluded public places, like toilets and rubbish dumps, presumably in the hope and expectation that a kind stranger will find the child and ensure its well-being.

Sadly, many abandoned babies in Malaysia are not so lucky, dying of dehydration or even being eaten by wild dogs.

The problem is, of course, the shame of being an unmarried mother. Many young women hide their pregnancies from their families, perhaps get no support from the baby's father, and for them the only option seems to be to give birth in secret and then dump the child somewhere -- trusting that s/he will be found and looked after.

There is now, at least in Kuala Lumpur, a much better option.

Continue reading.

(Sent by a dear friend.Probably as outraged as any decent human being could be on the dumping of unwanted babies.)