Yesterday I wrote a blog on a tragedy which recently came to light in the Midwest—a 19-year-old gave birth at home, said she had difficulty breast-feeding her baby, didn’t go to a hospital because she didn’t have health insurance, so she just did nothing although she knew the child would die without eating.
The young woman, Indra Book, is in jail. Facts of the case are conflicted. One fact I didn’t know yesterday was that Book was apparently told she was five months pregnancy in June. If this is true, the August birth meant that the baby was quite premature and at high risk of dying without immediate medical attention anyway.
It’s hard to know where to start in saying what went wrong here (obviously, the tragic death of a child is the most wrong). It remains to be seen whether Book is cognitively incompetent, criminally neglectful, or both. Nevertheless, the three words that come immediately to my mind are: Education, Education, Education.
It’s hard to believe Book didn’t know she could go to the emergency room whether she had health insurance or not. It is perhaps a bit less difficult to believe that she didn’t know her options for finding prenatal care.
Unfortunately, it is not so hard to believe that she didn’t know much about breastfeeding or its complications, which are more complicated than you might think, or about adoption. Book claims that she talked to adoption agencies which wouldn’t work with her because she had no prenatal care. I can believe that some agencies which specialize in coordinating private adoptions may tell a young woman that their clients will likely not choose to adopt a child with significant alcohol or drug exposure, for example. I cannot believe they did not give her other options. There are, in fact, some private agencies which specialize in hard-to-place children such as these. The public child welfare system certainly places these children.
Please see this related blog:
When You Just Can’t Breastfeed