Baby Hatch

If Justice Amy Coney Barrett has her way, baby hatches may begin to sprout across the country like donut shops and dollar stores. 

Baby hatches are places where new mothers can anonymously abandon their infants in the certainty that the baby will be discovered and cared for.  They’ve existed in one form or another all the way back to medieval times and they’ve been called different things: foundling wheels, foundling hatches and baby boxes to name a few.

Most often, baby hatches are built into a discreet spot on the side of a church or, these days, a government building, a firehouse, for example.  These days, though not in the Middle Ages, they’re rigged up with heat and alarms to alert do-gooders to the baby’s presence.  When found (foundling), the babies are medically cleared and then delivered into state-run foster care and eventually into adoption.  Parental rights are immediately terminated for those who use them.

Today, though not in centuries past, baby hatches were created as the result of so-called ‘safe haven’ laws that permit parents to abandon newborns without fear of legal consequences. They were enacted in response to a spate of horrific infanticides - newborns found dead in dumpsters, public bathrooms and alleyways.

All 50 of the United States now have safe haven laws but only ten states offer baby hatches.  No surprise that Coney Barrett’s home state of Indiana is one of them.  (The others are Arizona, Arkansas, Maine, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Pennsylvania.) Not surprising because Indiana, whose former governor became Donald Trump’s vice president, is a scorchingly red state, rated R+9 on the Cook Partisan Voting Index.  It’s one of several states seemingly intent upon controlling of the fertility of its female citizens.

 In Coney Barrett’s view, the safe haven laws and the baby hatches supporting them, alleviate the need for legalized abortion.  That’s because they allow a mother to rid herself of an unwanted infant and then go on with her life unburdened. All she has to do is locate the nearest baby hatch, lift the lid and drop the swaddled newborn in, much like a piece of mail into an old fashioned mailbox.  No fuss.  No muss.  After that, she can go on her merry way, back to whatever kind of life she had before.

That’s what I gathered from Coney Barrett’s questioning during recent oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – a case that threatens to overturn Roe v Wade.

Coney Barrett homed in on an aspect of reproductive freedom that startled me. If the problem with what she called “forced motherhood” (resulting from lack of access to safe legal abortion) was that it would “hinder women’s access to the workplace and to equal opportunities,” Justice Barrett asked, “why don’t safe haven laws take care of that problem?”

Should you laugh or cry?  Both? But the answer to her chilling question may be too complex and nuanced for Supreme Court arguments. 

Do we really consider the legal right to abortion a gateway to greater employment opportunities?? I’ve never thought of it that way and I doubt many women have.  Apparently, however, that’s what the conservative Catholic justice thinks.

Coney Barrett happens to be the mother of seven children, including two adopted from Haiti.  She’s the only mother on the court – an oft-repeated fact used to show her bona fides regarding reproductive rights.  Yet she shows a mind-blowing lack of empathy for mothers and babies when she offers safe haven laws and adoption as the main alternatives to abortion. 

At best, she’s cavalier and, at worst, heartless in her failure to realize that not all women share her resources and privilege. When she promotes adoption as an alternative to abortion, she’s presenting it as a win/win fairy tale not the lose/lose proposition countless first mothers and adoptees have experienced. 

Imagine the despair of a young mother who feels compelled to leave her newborn in a baby hatch!  It suggests that she, too, has been abandoned - by her family and/or her baby daddy.  That she has neither love nor money nor any other resources required to raise her child.  She might not even have a stable home.  (Unlike the Coney Barretts who, prior to their move to Washington, sold their six-bedroom Indiana home for $899,900.) Her abandonment of her baby is an act of desperation, not a step on the path to a better job. The loss and shame will never leave her.

And don’t forget the trauma of the newborn, whose experience of abandonment will be imprinted on his or her fragile psyche and linger inside forever.

In every case, adoption pits those with power and resources against those without them.  This was absolutely the case when my husband and I adopted a toddler in Peru thirty years ago. And it was surely the case when the Coney Barretts adopted two children from Haiti – the resourceful taking children from those without means. It’s a fact, and I’d expect a woman of Coney Barrett’s intelligence and education to understand this.  But sometimes ideology snuffs out understanding. 

Intellectual prowess remains a highly valued quality in our culture – and the telegenic Coney Barrett has demonstrated time and again that she’s got it.  Her intellectual achievements are epic.  But for me, empathy, not intellect, is the preeminent human quality. Coney Barrett’s apparent lack of it is as troubling as it is astonishing.