Family oriented, espousing family values, the message sent to viewers comes under scrutiny.

Safe Haven advocates found themselves in "7th Heaven" recently when the highly rated WB family-friendly series promoted anonymous baby dumping as a commonsense alternative to legal and informed relinquishment.

In a subplot in the September 30, 2002 episode, The Enemy Within, 16 year-old Simon Camden is faced with the daunting task of helping a former girlfriend hide her pregnancy from her parents, who would, she claims (with no evidence), "kill her" if they knew her predicament. Simon, with mild objection, facilitates both her refusal to talk to her parents and her decision to forgo pre-natal care and counseling. (Even a visit to Planned Parenthood or a crisis pregnancy center would have been helpful.) Instead, after reading Safe Haven propaganda in the high school newspaper and checking with a cop, Simon opts for "legal abandonment" - what Safe Haven pushers quaintly call "non-bureaucratic relinquishment" - a baby dump.

Rev. Camden, and his slightly disturbing sexy wife, Annie, would be little amused by the scheme. One can only imagine their disquiet if Mary or Lucy - or better yet, Ruthie in a couple of years - decided to dump a baby. The Camdens are the Cleavers on the cusp of the new millennium. They are the most functional and responsible couple on the tube. They are Christians. They do not drink or smoke. They dress well and they seldom utter a discouraging word. They really care. Yet, despite the surfeit of moral uplift we regular viewers of "7th Heaven" have come to know and love (or sneer at, as the case may be), Simon responds neither functionally nor responsibly when the magic baby appears. He delivers the secret newborn into the arms of a weepy nurse while his compassionate detective friend watches in the shadows. Like the bathwater, responsibility to oneself and others, accepting the consequences of one's actions - personal and family values that the Camdens have putatively imbued in Simon - are thrown out with the baby.

But moral ambiguity does not set well in Glen Oak, USA. The usual well-made tale is mussy. It isn't about Mary's bounced checks, or Annie's night out with the girls, or the chimp in the tree. It's about what happens to a baby's life and identity; it's about superficial answers to complex problems; it's about public policy that devalues women and children, their shared histories, their futures. Ends are left dangling.

Perhaps the storyline will be revisited but, in the meantime, viewers are left with unpretty questions about the mother and the baby:

*What happens to the baby as s/he trudges the adoption treadmill?
*Due to lack of pre-natal care and its unattended birth, will s/he suffer physical or developmental disabilities?
*Did the mother suffer injuries from the unattended birth? Will she get post-natal care and counseling?
*What if the mother had bled to death or the baby had died?
*Will the baby's father come forward and, if so, what will he do?
*Can the mother retrieve the baby?
*Will the baby really grow up "happy just to be alive," or will s/he be angry that the state has erased her/his identity, her/his genetic and social history?
*Why do laws exist that tell parents it's OK to abandon a baby?

Unlike laws that regulate adoption and abortion with their mandated "informed consent," legalized baby abandonment requires not even a signed piece of paper. "No Blame, No Shame, No Name." In some states, Safe Haven providers are legally barred from asking the identity of the baby and abandoner (not always the mother-as in the 7th Heaven case), offering medical treatment, taking a social or medical history, or suggesting counseling and referrals. A young woman, even minutes after birth, clearly in medical or mental distress, can simply walk through the door, leave her baby, and walk back out with no questions asked.

Women in deep pregnancy denial, and/or living with substance abuse, domestic violence, shame, and/or mental illness are the usual perpetrators of child abandonment and neonaticide, and no amount of Safe Haven laws or "7th Heaven" bromides will ease this harsh reality. Women who abandon their newborns, and sometimes kill them, will continue to do so because baby saving is not on their agenda. The baby as a living being does not exist to them.

Conversely, if the newspaper comments of doctors, police, behaviorists, and social service professionals are correct, the few women who have utilized Safe Haven drop-offs are scared, confused, and uninformed about options open to them such as government assistance, temporary foster care, or legal relinquishment and adoption options that Safe Haven providers are often not permitted to suggest. Moreover, they are in no danger of harming their newborns and are capable of making rational decisions about the future of themselves and their children once panic and confusion subside.

"7th Heaven" creator/producer/writer Brenda Hampton says that her mission "is to be harmless, rather than helpful." In her attempt to spin positive on baby dumps, she apparently decided to try both and failed miserably. The Enemy Within, with its advocacy of secret pregnancy and anonymous abandonment, potentially harms the physical and mental health of young teen viewers in crisis pregnancies, and does nothing to encourage responsible behavior towards themselves and their unborn children.

Ultimately, Safe Haven advocates view secret pregnancy as live baby versus dead baby, when the reality is quite different. Safe Haven programs are anti-child, anti-woman, and anti-mother. Baby dump laws establish a government-created class of individuals without identity, heritage, or genetic history. They discourage girls and women from seeking pre- and post-natal care as well as mental health counseling. They dehumanize and socially obliterate the very children and women they purport to help, turning the abandoned infant and her mother into little more than an ahistorical commodity. Some might even die. In the end, the programs only exacerbate the problems that lead to abandonment.

The Camdens deserve better. Children deserve better. We, as a society, deserve better

© 2002