Political Correctness Puts New Mother Through the Wringer

Political correctness continues to move closer to the critical mass it needs, to develop into a complete collapse of our social structures. As a father of four children, nobody considers the protection of a newborn baby’s rights more paramount than I, but this case shows how detached medical professionals, and the culture of bureaucracy can be from reality.  “She told me the burden was on me to prove that I should be allowed to take my baby home”, exclaimed the new mother.  These are words that keep ringing through my ears as I wonder why the “state” has placed the burden of proof on a new mother.   Of all the fathers our there, who have taken part in their child’s birth, how many have heard the mother make statements that are often very unreasonable, during labor, and have watched a groggy, exhausted mother, fumble through the first hours of motherhood.  During the delivery of my third child, our daughter, my wife kept yelling “I changed my mind”, and “take it back” during a painful, long, drug free 12 hour labor on News Years Eve, where the anesthetist was unavailable.  With each contraction she would slip into dis-logic, and after each contraction, she would return to normal.  Let us not forget that 60 years ago, a significant number of children were born at home, with their favorite aunt or neighbor midwife at the helm. Its time to go back to less litigious days, where medical professionals were able to judge human emotions, and make reasonable decisions, without passing every little thing on to an “over lawyered” child protection system.

When nurses finally told Piper she was free to leave, no discharge papers for her son were brought out. Instead, she faced a parade of inquisitive official visitors, including uniformed police, a social worker, a psychiatrist, and assorted doctors and nurses. Her baby had been placed on medical hold while government investigators considered whether Piper was fit to take Luke home to Prince George’s County, the authorities said. She had failed to bond with her baby, a nurse told Piper.

For three days, Piper fought through a bewildering nightmare of lawyers, investigators from the District and Prince George’s, and hospital officials. A night nurse reported that Piper had declined an opportunity to breast-feed her baby, according to the mother and her lawyer. “I was so groggy, I don’t even remember that incident,” Piper says.

A psychiatric intern asked Piper to spell “world” backward. A nurse-practitioner told Piper that it was awful that a new mother could be disappointed not to have had a girl. “She told me the burden was on me to prove that I should be allowed to take my baby home,” says Piper, a lawyer who works at the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Read the rest of the story @ Marc Fisher – Marc Fisher: Child Protection System Puts New Mother Through the Wringer – washingtonpost.com.

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