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The increasing rate of teen pregnancy and unwanted pregnancies are leading causes for baby dumping. The staggering statistics of baby dumping is both alarming and worrying.
This phenomenon is due to desperation, humiliation, ignorance and helplessness among others. But those are not plausible excuses for commiting this inhumane, heinous act.
The major cause of baby dumping stems from the lack of formal education as well as sex education. It is youth which is always related to baby dumping and most of them never finished school, are aged under 20, with no means to support themselves and their child.
Secondly, youth nowadays are increasingly becoming sexually active without proper knowledge about the birds and the bees. Most youth indulge in unprotected sex due to this. Thus, once they get pregnant and give birth, they abandon their newborn at dumpsites, stairwells or any secluded spots and often times, the infant dies before being found by anybody. This takes a toll on the mother too, who may not receive proper post-natal care which can be lfe threatening.
A bone chilling case happened in Malaysia, ironically, an Islamic country. After giving birth in the school toilet, a teenager, desperate to get rid of her baby stuffed her newborn into her schoolbag and the baby was found dead 17 hours later.
According to Hon Diende (2007) lack of parental control also contributes to this sorry state of society. Parents these days trus their children too much and think that they can manage life wisely when the reality is otherwise. When a parent whose daughter was guilty of giving birth in the toilet of a clinic and later shove the baby headfirst into the lavatory, drowning it was asked whether she was aware of her daughter’s pregnancy, she said, “No, I had no idea. I brought her to the clinic when she complained of abdominal pain which turned out to be labour pain.” That statement says a lot, doesn’t it?
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Parents should trust their children but only to a certain extent as most teens are still not able to make responsible decisions as hormones overtake sensibilities. Parents must guide their children for as long as they can. Your children need you; they may not know it, acknowledge it or admit it but they do.
Some teens may not even know that they are pregnant if they do not know what sex entails–unprotected or otherwise. Parents are advised monitor their child’s weight gain and eating habits and their social activities, get to know their childrens’ friends and teachers and check that they stay in school and tuition centers.
Given this dog eat dog world, competetive world, it is a fact that parents cannot monitor the activities of their adolescent children 24/7. But, what they can do is equip their kids with the right knowledge about sex before they learn all the wrong stuff about sex from porn and ill-informed peers and start experimenting. The scrounge to this though, many cultures consider talking about sex to growing up children as taboo which is very unfortunate and it is in these cultures where baby abandonment is most prevalent, making it a perennial problem.
Since parental bees and birds divulge might not work out, sex education can be introduced in schools so that kids are aware of the consequences of pre-marital and unprotected sex as well as having many sexual partners.
School for pregnant teens is also another viable way to tackle with baby dumping. Such schools offer education and hope for the pregnant teen and her baby. Baby hatch too, comes in this category.
Another effective measure to curb this problem is enforcing the law; those who abandon their babies should be charged under the offence of attempted murder and if the abandoned child dies, the charge should be manslaughter or homicide unless the child is stillborn and the decision made after post mortem. Why such strict law should be introduced? It is because the baby was a sentient, complete human being who has every right to live and have been denied that right by the very people who brought he or she to being. This will also make a potential baby dumper think thrice before committing this crime against humanity.
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