22,000 Babies a Year Abandoned in Hospitals

By Glenn Sacks

Has anybody ever heard of this? I was reading about foster care and orphanages in an article called “The Road Home” in a 2001 edition of The Women’s Quarterly when I noticed a statistic I’d never seen before. According to UC Irvine economics professor Richard McKenzie, “Upwards of 22,000 babies are abandoned annually in the hospitals in which they were born.”

I’ve no idea if this statistic is true or not, but the source seems credible. I’ve noted before that 1.5 million American women legally walk away from motherhood every year through adoption or abortion, and that in over 40 states mothers can completely opt out of motherhood by returning unwanted babies to the hospital shortly after birth. I don’t condone unwed fathers who won’t support their babies, but it’s always seemed curious to me that we label unwed fathers who are reluctant to pay child support “deadbeats,” yet do not apply the label to women who similarly reject parenthood by returning their unwanted babies to the hospital or giving them up for adoption.

The apparent fact that 22,000 mothers each year slip out of hospitals and leave their babies behind creates some interesting questions. Since the women were in the hospitals giving birth, it is very likely that the hospitals have the women’s full names, personal information, addresses, etc. If an unwed father abandons his child and the child is put in foster care, the state bills him for child support to recoup the cost of foster care. When a father abandons his child and the mother goes on welfare, the state bills the father for child support to recoup its welfare costs.

In these situations the mothers have dumped 18 years of foster care costs onto the state. Does the state go after them for 18 years of child support to recoup its costs? Are they hunted down and jailed the way ”deadbeat dads” are? Or, since they’re women, does the state let them go and look the other way? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect the latter. If anyone knows more about this specific subject, feel free to let me know.

On the general issue of branding men who don’t want to be fathers “deadbeats” while giving women who reject motherhood a pass, see my co-authored column Respect a Man’s Choice, Too (AlterNet, 8/1/06).