Nebraska had no age limit for a bit. Guy dropped off 9 of his 10 kids(1 was 18) cause he felt overwhelmed after his wife died a year earlier.
"I think there's a misperception that we just inadvertently left an age cap out. But the reality was we wanted to save lives of older kids who might be at risk," said Amanda McGill Johnson, a Nebraska state senator at the time.
That actually kind of makes sense? I mean, dropping off teens is excessive, but maybe it highlights an issue? Overwhelmed parents of teenagers isn't something I had on my list of people that need more help, at least.
Wtf! That is insane 🤣 good read!
I'm more concerned how he had ten kids and then felt overwhelmed when his wife left him. Like what the fuck?!
Grieving for a partner definitely doesn't make it easier to raise your children?!
Reasonable. Now who's gonna bet that some dip shit in Washington makes it illegal because "mothers should face the consequences of their decisions" or some bullshit.
Call me a cynical old bitch but when the US does something reasonable I always think "how they gonna fuck it up this time?"
Reasonable for the mother. The baby is rolling the dice.
Healthy babies are in high demand for adoption, so the odds are good, but not perfect, and its a terrible system to get stuck in, at least in my state.
Yeah, but when I drop a teenager off at the fire station, they just bring her back home and tell me I can't do that because it's considered "child abandonment."
Shoulda been in Nebraska smh
Have you tried screaming “back back no trade back no trade back” when you drop them?
Sorry you missed the easy return window!
I feel like this woold lead to confusion amongst firemen. Like they go to pull out of the firehouse to respond to a fire, but they have to stop before they start because a random baby is just there for no reason.
I could be wrong, but I doubt most firefighters even know the proceedure for "Baby randomly dropped off without a name".
My first instinct would be to call child services. Like what else would you do?
I'd wager most of them know the first steps of the procedure. It's likely a story that gets passed around a lot, even if it's a rare occurrence. Also, every firefighter I've known is borderline OCD with keeping the station clean. I doubt that baby would be outside for long before they noticed.
Nah they're made aware.
I mean, I guess a state could've passed the law, saying "hey, leave newborns at fire stations" and not informed the fire house, but it seems far more likely that they are informed.
But States either have designated boxes, or you hand the child over to them directly. You don't just leave it in front of the firehouse door.
Yeah, I think my state of NC requires there to be a designated baby receiver on call at all times just in case someone pulls up with one that they need to get rid of.
I feel like if we know about this, they would too. Or at least a supervisor.
FYI when firefighters leave on call it's not like ALL of them leave. a team leaves.
there's still people and trainees left behind that can handle things back at the station.
I think most fire departments are volunteer meaning that the stations are vacant unless there's an active call.
SO in fire/EMS.
Most fire stations in the US have at least one person trained as a paramedic/EMT and in many places all of them have at least some medical training. Because in a lot of places fire trucks arrive, there's people who need immediate medical help.
So they have the basic skills to keep a newborn baby alive until they can get it to a hospital. And if it's older and healthy, they can just play with it and feed it and clean it as needed until Child Services arrives or it grows up and joins the crew.
or it grows up and joins the crew.
😳
There is something similar called "baby hatch" in Germany, but those are usually located at hospitals. Why the fire station? It makes no sense to me.
Fire stations are everywhere, staffed by trustworthy people, who inevitably also have medical training. Additionally they aren't scary like the police are.
They're the people you call if you need help.
You can surrender an infant at a hospital too, as well as a police station, but fire stations are just more frequent.
Hospitals in the US are kind of scattered, largely as a result of private equity tomfoolery. A lot of communities don't have one nearby. But pretty much every community has at least a volunteer fire station, and I believe all firefighters are required to be trained in at least first aid, if not be fully-qualified EMTs.
As a person who was dropped off somewhere as a baby, I completely love this, this can help many babies live a full filling life tbh.
Most based source in the thread 💯
Thank you for sharing you’re experience 🙏
All 50 states of what?
Matter
The US is simply where the highest number of anglophones reside. You'd have to sum up the next three nations to get more English speakers than the US (according to worldatlas.com).
Assuming an English speaker on the internet is American is still rude, but not exactly a bad guess - and hardly chauvinism imo
Around 1½ billion people in the world know English, less than ¼ of them live in the US.
I'd bet about 10% of them live in India alone! It's been my experience that when people think about the global populace as a whole they don't give India nearly as much weight as it warrants XD
Don't do numbers at me, if a quarter of the roulette wheel says USA we both know where you're putting your money.
Again, nobody said it was clean thinking or appropriate to pre-judge, only that you can easily see how the mistake gets made without ever calling it chauvinism.
[…], only that you can easily see how the mistake gets made without ever calling it chauvinism.
This is the point where I strongly disagree with you, constantly mistaking less than ¼ for being the most likely is not easily made, there's a good reason for why the expression US Defaultism exists, because a particular mindset is required for such a mistake to be easily made.
What about a 956 month old toddler?
What about Puerto Rico?
Yeah this directly came out of people abandoning babies in all sorts of place. Some places have these nest type of boxes all padded and temperature controlled where people can leave babies. This is the type of good thing I could see today republicans rallying to stop.
Before fire stations, churches and monasteries did the same thing. And like how some fire stations have a dedicated baby drop box, the churches and monasteries sometimes did, too.
now that is wild.
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