Ultimate throw-away: Baby born in porta-potty screams about American society

July 2, 6:51 PMDC Ethical Issues ExaminerLaura Harrison McBride

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Multiple-birth delivery room for a depraved America (Wiki Commons)

There are lots of news stories on the Internet (CNN, Huffington Post, et al) about the woman, Candy Vigneri, who allegedly gave birth in a porta-potty and left the baby girl in the muck, before finally retrieving it…after she had smoked a cigarette.

A CNN report noted that the woman has other children at home in Cambridge, MD, a waterfront town a short car ride from D.C.

A reader of Huffington Post remarked, tongue in cheek, that it must be God’s will for such things to happen, rather than have abortions available when needed.

The woman is reported to be 44 years old. She is not, if she indeed did the alleged deed, a frightened teenager who didn’t know where to turn for help, either to avoid pregnancy, terminate the pregnancy, or deliver the baby.

If nothing else is apparent, this is: American society has failed that baby at every level. If the baby’s mother is unable to comprehend the meaning of her actions, why does she still have children at home to care for, as a CNN report noted? Surely, if she viewed leaving a baby in a porta-potty at birth was sane, perhaps other failures of childcare have come to light. If the mother thought, as one report noted, that the child was dead…why did she think the child was dead? And if she did think that, then why did she not go to an emergency room, at least, and deliver the dead child? And if she thought it was dead, why did she retrieve it? And why did she have it there, rather than at home in her own toilet? Possibly because a baby would sink into the liquid slime in a porta potty, but not in a household toilet.

There are so many possibilities here that it’s difficult, with so little information yet revealed, to even assess the ethical ramifications completely.

One thing is certain, however: A baby was born in a porta-potty in the wealthiest nation on earth. That child, whatever it is a product of, was given a baptism in excrement by a mother who either knew no better or was depraved to an extent almost unimaginable. And whether or not the woman charged with child abuse and reckless endangerment over this crime is found guilty or not, someone did that deed.

Perhaps we can’t expect much better behavior regarding giving birth in a nation that once prospered on the backs of slaves who were forced to give birth in fields. Perhaps we can’t expect much more in a nation that confuses statistics with education and tests children to minimal standards rather than teaching them to maximal ones. Perhaps we can’t expect more in a nation in which as many as 70 percent of its citizens slip through the health-care cracks. Would a baby be born in such conditions if the mother had access to prenatal care? Unless that mother was emotionally incompetent or developmentally delayed -- and had somehow avoided being assessed and treated for whichever of those she was -- not likely.

Who was keeping an eye on the situation that led to this? Doctors? Probably not. Social workers? Probably not. Teachers, if the other children are old enough for school? Probably not. A spouse? Probably not? Extended family? Probably not, unless they, too, are impaired and unable to cope. In which case, all the previous questions apply.

Whether or not this woman is found guilty of the things she has been charged with, again, one thing remains documented: A woman gave birth to a baby in a porta potty in the richest nation on earth.

It is shameful. It is ethically unsupportable. It is humanely unthinkable.

And yet, it happened.

How long, I wonder, are the religionists going to cant on and on about the evils of sex education and pregnancy termination without also stepping up and providing homes for even those ill-starred and unwanted babies as are born now, when we at least have a partially intact Roe v. Wade, if not the funds and will to support it fully?

How long are the politicians going to avoid providing health care for all Americans from conception until the moment of a dignified death? All this has long been in place in France, a nation so-called U.S. patriots have more than once derided because the French refuse to participate in our military exploits on command.

Health care and child welfare programs are facts of life in the U.K. They are facts of life in virtually all of Europe. How far must this nation venture from its roots before we realize that Europe -- the cradle of a young America -- is not populated by idiots, but rather by societies that have several hundred years’ experience on us in dealing with social problems? When will we get over our petulance, the petulance of a teenager attempting to distance himself from the parent, and accept that not everything Europe has wrought is bad?

That birth of that poor child in a three-by-three, foul-smelling, tiger-cage-hot plastic box is symbolic of the failure of American fundamentalist religiosity to cure societal ills. Religiosity includes no ethics; it includes no humanitarianism; it includes only didactic pronouncements adhered to by those who delude themselves into thinking that following a formulaic approach to life excuses them from caring for their fellowman.

It is symbolic of our failure as a nation to teach fundamental values concerning the sanctity of life and the necessity of acting humanely.

It is symbolic of the failure of American medicine to take care of the American population.

It is symbolic of the woeful inadequacy of our social welfare systems.

But the child herself is not a symbol. The child must be found a loving home and funding must be provided, by the same government and society that has so egregiously failed her to date, to help her beyond the stigma of being born in a toss away toilet by a mother who walked away smoking a cigarette, as if this monstrous act were just ordinary behavior in the land of the brave and the home of the free.

I fear that perhaps it is.

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