Another day, another innocent casualty

By Shaun Lee

An angler who was fishing at a river in Damansara on Sunday, 15^th August 2010, was probably hoping to catch a fish or two.  However his “catch of the day” ended up being the body of a day-old baby girl covered in a towel and cloth and stuffed in a bag. An eight-year old boy in Bandar Bukit Bunga who curiously followed a foul smell ended up discovering the gruesome cause of the smell, a dead baby girl in a sewage tank behind a college dormitorya baby in a cloth bag, still alive and with her umbilical cord still attached a few days later.  A security guard for a factory at the Ayer Keroh Industrial Estate discovered , abandoned in a dumpster was reported in the 17^th August issue of The Star newspaper.

These are just some of the cases of baby dumping, the latest scourge to sweep Malaysia.  Each day, the papers carry news of at least one case of baby dumping being reported.  In most of the cases reported, the babies are usually newborns with their umbilical cords still intact, suggesting that they may have been recently delivered.  Being babies, they are obviously still vulnerable and are unable to survive being abandoned.  Hence most of these babies end up dead.

Why is baby dumping so rampant these days?  First, some light should be shed on the parents of these babies.  Usually, the parents of these babies are youths.  These youths are at an age where they are feeling “experimental” or want to engage in a sexual relationship.  They feel that they are ready to handle the consequences of what may happen should they engage in such a relationship.

However, most of them are ill-prepared to face the responsibilities that come with the relationship.  Eventually, when unexpected pregnancies occur, the couple may panic and in the case of the males, they will eventually try to avoid any form of responsibility for the pregnancy.  This leaves the females to fend for herself.  Perhaps out of uncertainty of the future or even shame, these girls will seek a miscarriage or worst, deliver the baby and conveniently abandon them wherever possible.

An example of this case would be the case of the abandoned baby girl in the factory at the Ayer Keroh Industrial Estate.  The parents of this poor girl were a couple consisting of an 18-year old factory worker and his 17-year old girlfriend.  This couple was eventually remanded and is now the first couple to be charged under the Penal Code for baby dumping.  Judging from the situation, the couple were probably ill-prepared to take on the responsibility of raising a child as both were young and only factory workers.  As they were not married and had meager jobs, they could have abandoned the baby out of shame or because she was an unwelcome mouth to feed.

Another reason for baby dumping is the emergence of dropping-off shelters for abandoned babies.  Pusat Kebahagiaan Wanita dan Remaja (Kewaja) and Baitul Fiqh founded a women’s shelter which could provide women with unwanted pregnancies to deliver their babies and put them up for adoption.  This method does little to reduce the number of baby dumping but instead, may contribute to elevating the statistics.

What this shelter does is basically relieving the women and indirectly, the men responsible of their duties towards the babies.  It would suffice to say that these shelters will eventually cause more unwanted pregnancies as the perpetrators can easily dumped their unwanted babies at the shelter and hence, dump the responsibility of caring for their babies because they know should another unwanted pregnancy occur, they can always go back to the shelter.

OrphanCARE, Malaysia’s first baby hatch is another example of where couples may leave their unwanted babies.  OrphanCARE was set up on 29^th May 2010 takes in abandoned babies from couples and women and sometimes put them up for adoption.

So far there have been a total of 472 babies discarded since 2005.  Out of the 472 cases, 258 cases involved dead babies. What makes the numbers worst is that fact that there may be more cases which have gone unreported.

Something must be done to reduce the number of baby dumping cases in Malaysia.  The government should further enforce Section 317 of the Penal Code which deals with abandoning a child below the age of 12.  The government should also turn their focus to youths as they are the most likely to engage in such a heinous act.  The shelters for women should focus on educating the women on raising a child rather than literally relieving them of their responsibilities.  Since society is also keen on blaming the women should she be pregnant out of wedlock, the men involved should also be made to shoulder the responsibilities and take part of the blame.  It is wrong for just the women to suffer while the men escape scot-free.

Something must be done to ensure that baby dumping does not become yet another major scourge in Malaysia.  These babies are innocent lives which were formed because of the actions of others; hence they should not be made to suffer from their parents mistakes.