Kentucky can't claim to be pro-life when we fail to care for babies once they're born
For a nation so sold on pro-life, we certainly fail to care for those same babies once they are born. The recent death of Baby Miya, whose hidden body was left to rot in her home, is only one example.
A quick Google search brings to light the horrors of being an infant in Kentucky: the five-month-old whose body was stashed in an attic after he died of meth poisoning. The 17-month-old who died from sexual and physical abuse. The 6-month-old who died from malnutrition while her mother smoked meth - two other children were home as well.
Then there was the one-month-old who died of asphyxiation after her intoxicated mother passed out while holding her. Two other children had already been removed from that home due to abuse.
As Kentucky consistently overshoots national rates of child abuse by a wide margin, it is painfully clear that some people shouldn’t be responsible for a gerbil, let alone an infant.
Seek Common Ground: Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is rivals with Tennessee’s Bill Lee. They should work together.
We are sentencing women to a lifetime of unwanted motherhood
Kentucky national ranking for child abuse has fallen from sixth to 14th, according to the latest U.S. Child Maltreatment Report, but infants under 12 months remain the highest subcategory of those abused, as reported by Kentucky Youth Advocates. They are invisible to society’s safety nets – mandatory reporters like teachers – and they suffer for it.
We don’t issue driver’s licenses to habitual drunks. We don’t give shelter pets to people convicted of animal abuse. Yet we still allow a newborn to go home with an adult already deemed dangerous. We even inspect the infant’s car seat before leaving the hospital, but not their risk of addiction exposure or neglect once home.
In short, a society cannot demand pro-life policies then turn its back on the agonies a child is forced to endure once born. It is inexcusable that the loudest activists become invisible when an infant is most vulnerable to abuse. No protester puts down a picket sign to feed an unwanted infant once it’s born into poverty so that its mother can attend rehab. Yet isn’t that child’s life just as precious postpartum?
Women deserve abortion access. Kentucky laws mean rape victims like me have no options.
Simply expecting unfit, unwilling, mothers to suddenly become ambassadors of hearth and home once their baby arrives is akin to wondering why we aren’t getting blood from turnips, then planting more turnips. We are sentencing women to a lifetime of unwanted motherhood then letting them hang for their crime, all while chastising them for not growing wings.
If we are to be a true commonwealth, better together and worthy of our bourbon, we must do better by our children. Sure, we can continue to wag a finger in warning at the younger generations. We can lament kids these days, forswear rock-n-roll and clutch our pearls at the latest unloved baby to go missing or turn up dead.
But if we aren’t going to help protect and care for the children of pro-life policies, then we can’t call ourselves completely pro-life. Maybe we’re just pro-birth. And too many babies in the commonwealth have suffered under that policy already.
Emily Burton Sherman is an educator and columnist residing in western Kentucky. She is a graduate of the University of Kentucky’s School of Journalism and Media.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Protect babies born or admit you aren't really pro-life, Kentucky
