Unwanted babies can just go live at convents

[SpeakNow]

That's what stinking lousewife says:

Near the main church in Segovia, Spain, is a convent of cloistered nuns, although given Spain’s apostasy, I am not sure that it still exists. As one entered the convent, and I was fortunate enough to do so, I was shown a corridor that was windowless, and at the end of it was a door that opened up to what appears to be a huge lazy Susan device. Whenever a child was brought to the convent, whether by its natural mother or a surrogate, the procedure was the same: the child, wrapped in swaddling clothes, was put on the lazy Susan, and at the instruction of the voice of the nun on the other side of this screened partition, then the child was turned on lazy Susan. The donor and the recipient never saw each other, but from that moment, the child, probably a girl, now lived under the direction of the nuns, never knowing her biological parents.

http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2012/04/what-happened-to-unwanted-babies-before-abortion/

[emmiedahl]

I hear they had this lovely place called the Magdalene Laundries that offered a home and a job to unwed mothers. :roll:

[uber frau]

Given the shit that's hit the fan in the past year over their role in a fairly inhumane local adoption industry, nobody can consider the Spanish Catholic Church's approach as anything other than what not to do.

But then, the Stinking Houseplant makes even Rush seem almost rational and likeable.

If we really want to know what happened to unwanted babies before birth control and abortion, let's go and see what happened in Romania or take a tour of some of the back streets of Kolkutta, shall we?

[2xx1xy1JD]

Yeah, convent care also worked out really well for the Duplessis orphans in Quebec:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplessis_Orphans (Quebec government and Catholic Church cooked up a scheme to label perfectly normal orphans as developmentally delayed, in order to get more federal funding, and in the process destroyed the orphans' lives by shipping them to insane asylums, subjecting them to physical and sexual abuse, and even having perfectly healthy orphans undergo lobotomies. There are allegations that are even worse, including medical experimentation and selling cadavers.)

[Rosa]

Those baby lazy susans (they were called turning cradles) are from the 18th or 19th century , when the foundling & orphan death rate was so high it was effectively church-sponsored infanticide - 65% in France in the mid 19th century. And it wasn't just "how things were in those days" for the high infanticide rates, late 19th century reforms made the death rate go down quite a bit. It was that they were a way of disposing of unwanted babies. At their peak, about 5% of babies in France were abandoned that way and more than half of them died. For an even worse solution, check out 19th century "baby farms" in England.

source: The Child: An Encyclopedic Companion, Richard A. Shweder, Editor in Chief, article: Abandonment & Infanticide.

Poor Zhu Zhu pet, she can't even use Google. I found an academic source for something I vaguely remembered, in about 1 minute.

[Conuly]

Unwanted babies, historically, were killed. Abandoning your child at the convent was just a way to kid yourself that your child might survive. Odds are it wouldn't. There were a LOT of unwanted babies back in the day.

[Deleted03]

Unwanted babies, historically, were killed. Abandoning your child at the convent was just a way to kid yourself that your child might survive. Odds are it wouldn't. There were a LOT of unwanted babies back in the day.

Yes Rousseau has a whole apology on I did not know the rate of death was over 75% when I abandoned each of my 5 kids...

Anyway he's an annoying cry baby.

I keep reading unwanted babies can just go live at concerts lol I'm sure they'd have more funs than regular orphans :P

[brigid]

My great-grandmother was the last of 12 children and was sent to the orphanage in Nimes . She was five when she arrived and twelve when one of her older sisters pulled her out to help her run her own house. During the time she was at the orphanage, she was taught a trade (she was a seamstress) and subjected to abuse, that she didn't mention much. I vividly remember the first time I saw her feet. Every one of her toes overlapped the other toward the big toe because she never had shoes that fit.

If someone said to my face that we should just let the nuns take care of the orphans, I don't know if I could not slap them.

[FireIsCatching89]

Those baby lazy susans (they were called turning cradles) are from the 18th or 19th century , when the foundling & orphan death rate was so high it was effectively church-sponsored infanticide - 65% in France in the mid 19th century. And it wasn't just "how things were in those days" for the high infanticide rates, late 19th century reforms made the death rate go down quite a bit. It was that they were a way of disposing of unwanted babies. At their peak, about 5% of babies in France were abandoned that way and more than half of them died. For an even worse solution, check out 19th century "baby farms" in England.

source: The Child: An Encyclopedic Companion, Richard A. Shweder, Editor in Chief, article: Abandonment & Infanticide.

Poor Zhu Zhu pet, she can't even use Google. I found an academic source for something I vaguely remembered, in about 1 minute.

I've heard that there were mortality rates of upwards of 90% in 18th century northern Italy in church-run foundling homes.

And those baby farmers/nurses/foster mothers? Well, lets just say that the English nicknamed them the "angelmakers" for a fuckin' REASON.

[CanadianHippie]

I wrote something out and the internet ate it, so here's the abridged version.

ThinkingHouse wife, you are an uneducated, boiling mass of ignorant covered in pulsating boils of hate.

[GenerationCedarchip]

Holy cow. I can't decide if that piece is just willful ignorance or just plain meanspirited. With louseiwfe, one never knows. I remember reading some awful things about the "baby farms" back in college, but I can see where some folks might buy into TH's little fantasy here. Most people think of unwanted babies and conjure up images of couples clamoring to adopt infants (usually white ones) because that's what a lot of middle class Americans hear about now. I don't think a lot of people know about all of the unwanted children back in earlier centuries before birth control.

[Deleted03]

I've heard that there were mortality rates of upwards of 90% in 18th century northern Italy in church-run foundling homes.

And those baby farmers/nurses/foster mothers? Well, lets just say that the English nicknamed them the "angelmakers" for a fuckin' REASON.

I thought angelmakers were for those who did abortions?

To be honest though, they did not have artificial milk, and from what I heard the babies could get infections and such from other moms' breastmilk (just imagine how many bf women would have been needed to take care of all those babies). So I'm sure that when 3/4 died in the first year, there were still a bunch of them dying from abuse and overwork.

[Koala]

My biological father was one of the "lucky" <---- (extreme sarcasm) kids that ended up in a Catholic orphanage. He was 8 when his father committed suicide and his mother died of cancer (6 months apart). Family took him for a while, but in the end he and his siblings were split up like a litter of kittens. He went to the orphanage where he was beaten with wire coat-hangers among other things. He finally ran away and lived under a bridge. He got food out of a bakery trash can/dumpster.

He went on to become an alcoholic that beat his wife and abandoned his child.

[kb2]

Why is the title of her post, "What happened to unwanted babies before abortion"? While I'm sure abortion was extremely unsafe in the 18th/17th/16th century, it probably existed then. (I'd go read what century exactly she's talking about, but her site sends me into fits of rage.)

And as Sophie pointed out, before artificial milk was invented, a baby being separated from its biological mother probably put it at a great disadvantage for survival. I doubt many nuns were lactating.

[crazyforkate]

Why is the title of her post, "What happened to unwanted babies before abortion"? While I'm sure abortion was extremely unsafe in the 18th/17th/16th century, it probably existed then. (I'd go read what century exactly she's talking about, but her site sends me into fits of rage.)

Yeah, rudimentary forms of abortion have existed as long as women have been getting pregnant. Even some animals practice it. Criminalizing something does not magically make it disappear.

[shesinsane]

Yeah, rudimentary forms of abortion have existed as long as women have been getting pregnant. Even some animals practice it. Criminalizing something does not magically make it disappear.

So very true, yet the forced birthers like to pretend otherwise.

[fakepigtails73]

I hear they had this lovely place called the Magdalene Laundries that offered a home and a job to unwed mothers. :roll:

In the Québec of the mid-1950s many orphans were put into mental asylums instead of orphanages in a scheme from the provincial govt. to get federal funds that went into "health care" instead of "social services", the latter which the feds didn't subsidize. Thanks to this some 3000 orphans received horrible mistreatment (lobotomies, electroshocks, cold baths, insulin ODs, daily beatings) in these asylums. :( In the late 1990s shallow graves filled with the anonymous remains of some of these "Duplessis Orphans" were found on the grounds of the city's biggest psychiatric hospital (that hospital used to have its own postal code and city name since it was so big).

I guess the TH thinks that it was indeed a clever way for the prov. govt. to get $$ and to get rid of some orphans; who cares, most of them were bastards anyways so no need for them to receive good care like legitimate ones, right TH??

Makes me sick. :cry:

Re: Magdalene laundries, the last one closed in...1996.

[fakepigtails73]

Yeah, convent care also worked out really well for the Duplessis orphans in Quebec:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplessis_Orphans (Quebec government and Catholic Church cooked up a scheme to label perfectly normal orphans as developmentally delayed, in order to get more federal funding, and in the process destroyed the orphans' lives by shipping them to insane asylums, subjecting them to physical and sexual abuse, and even having perfectly healthy orphans undergo lobotomies. There are allegations that are even worse, including medical experimentation and selling cadavers.)

Oops! That"ll teach me not to read all postings before writing my reply. You beat me to it!

[lilah]

I recalllwill hearing about some japanesecue hospitals had these kind of devices for relinquishing a child but they weren't used much. In fact the installations was more about gadget love than actual demand for anonymous child abandonment.

Don't a lot states have no fault child relinquishment drop offs in hospitals to protect infants from infanticide? I wonder what the protocol would be for that.

[GeoBQn]

This post reminds me of when I was in college and our newspaper's conservative columnist wrote a column about how children would be better off living in orphanages run by nuns than being adopted by gay and lesbian parents. There was such an intense, angry outcry over the column that he practically had to go into hiding for the last several weeks of school.

[Kaylee]

Yeah, rudimentary forms of abortion have existed as long as women have been getting pregnant. Even some animals practice it. Criminalizing something does not magically make it disappear.

More than even abortion. If you look up the history of foundling wheels and things like this, most came about in places with high rates of infanticide where women were killing or abandoning babies to the elements and wild animals after they were born. There's one in Rome that was a direct response to large numbers of infants being thrown into the Tiber and drowned.

They didn't came about, as the article claims, because life was so sacred in the past that women would not even consider abortion, but as a way to try to rescue some of the babies that would have been outright killed otherwise. The reason so many women were willing to do this - because society so stigmatized and punished unwed mothers and because there was no safety net or aid for parents who could not afford to feed and care for all their children (sounds a lot like the type of society TH has advocated in other posts).

In addition to the "safe haven" laws where infants can be left at hospitals by parents who feel unable to care for them, a few countries have brought back "baby hatches", which are really similar to the ones from Medieval days. Most are a door or window that opens up and the baby can be placed in a padded or heated bassinet, with an alarm or sensor alerting staff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_hatch

[constantgardener]

More than even abortion. If you look up the history of foundling wheels and things like this, most came about in places with high rates of infanticide where women were killing or abandoning babies to the elements and wild animals after they were born. There's one in Rome that was a direct response to large numbers of infants being thrown into the Tiber and drowned.

They didn't came about, as the article claims, because life was so sacred in the past that women would not even consider abortion, but as a way to try to rescue some of the babies that would have been outright killed otherwise. The reason so many women were willing to do this - because society so stigmatized and punished unwed mothers and because there was no safety net or aid for parents who could not afford to feed and care for all their children (sounds a lot like the type of society TH has advocated in other posts).

In addition to the "safe haven" laws where infants can be left at hospitals by parents who feel unable to care for them, a few countries have brought back "baby hatches", which are really similar to the ones from Medieval days. Most are a door or window that opens up and the baby can be placed in a padded or heated bassinet, with an alarm or sensor alerting staff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_hatch

I watched an absolutely heartbreaking documentary a few months ago about a British Asian woman adopting a baby from Pakistan. She went to an organisation that provided cribs at various 'drop-off' points where women could leave their unwanted babies and they would check these cribs every few hours. They had no idea of these babies' backgrounds, and many of them seemed to have medical conditions that the adoptive parents only found out about later. Obviously the adoption agency was doing their best in the circumstances but how awful for there to be a need for it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014grx1

[fakepigtails73]

This post reminds me of when I was in college and our newspaper's conservative columnist wrote a column about how children would be better off living in orphanages run by nuns than being adopted by gay and lesbian parents. There was such an intense, angry outcry over the column that he practically had to go into hiding for the last several weeks of school.

Didn't Newt Gingrich propose the return of state and clergy-run orphanges in the mid-90s as a solution to his so-called "abortion crisis"??

Poor chap. :whistle:

[Artemis]

This is what happened to unwanted babies before abortion:

http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1989-0/haller.htm

A common practice in rural England was to feed newborns to the pigs, to dispose of the evidence.

[emmiedahl]

Before family planning, unwanted children were disposed of as garbage, whether killed or abandoned to a life of abuse and poverty. Pro-life people who find abortion distasteful should be appalled by the conditions that were normative at the time. It's easy to forget in our culture, where most people choose to reproduce and have safety nets available, just how bad it was. It was not *just like today* but with more clean, smiling faces at the breakfast table. It was dire and dirty and cruel.

We cannot let them take us back. Our daughters deserve more.