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FartyMcFarter 4 hours ago [-]
Everything about this story is so satisfying, that if I read it in a lesser source I would be doubting it.
The person finding the baby was the person who eventually adopted him. The judge asking the guy to adopt the baby was the same judge that performed the wedding of the couple doing the adoption. Just so many great details.
wood_spirit 2 hours ago [-]
Many of us could easily imagine, once chance puts us in the position of the person who can’t walk past, taking a concerned interest in the outcome and, realising that the baby would go into the care system, stepping up and doing the massive step of talking it upon ourselves to provide that home?
II2II 38 minutes ago [-]
Imagine, perhaps. Stepping up and doing it, that's more difficult. Then consider this scenario: two young men taking in a child when they did not have financial or social security. I'm not sure what the situation was like for gay men in NYC at the time, but it would be years until they could legally marry. Heck, they weren't even living together at the time. That takes a whole lot of bravery.
(I will acknowledge that it is not impossible to imagine. I have known people who have adopted the children of strangers after reporting their family for abuse.)
tomcam 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
3 hours ago [-]
throeididkf 3 hours ago [-]
Satisfying? I wish they would find and punish child abuser, who did this! There are safe better ways to "dispose" unwanted baby, there is zero reason to dump living human baby into bin or leave it in dumpster in metro!
zamadatix 13 minutes ago [-]
God bless the woman who felt they had no other choice & give them help rather than punishment. We will never know the circumstances but we can obviously assume they weren't very much better than the baby's to have done this. Nobody doing something like this out of disdain for the child would have carried it to delivery (regardless of their stance on abortion).
arethuza 1 hours ago [-]
Personally I would be more worried that the woman that had just given birth received the appropriate medical attention and help with whatever circumstances made her feel that she had to abandon her child.
PaulRobinson 1 hours ago [-]
Had you considered this was not in the mother’s control, was not her choice, and/or that this was a better outcome for the child and she knew that?
He was not left in a bin or dumpster. This is not an ideal way to give up a baby for adoption, but don’t assume he was unwanted, or unloved: you don’t know - or seem able to imagine - the full story.
pjc50 42 minutes ago [-]
Quite often in these cases the mother is an abused minor themselves.
Where does it say the baby was in a dumpster or bin?
throwaway2046 22 minutes ago [-]
Inspiring to see the couple accomplish this and in the early 2000s no less. Wishing them all the best. If you haven't already, watch the animated short film[1] by Zombie Studio. It was my introduction to this case before reading the article.
I find this story slightly odd. I'm not trying to suggest it's not true, I have trust in the Guardian not to print falsehoods; but do they really offer abandoned babies to just anyone in America?
Here in the UK, I used to work with a guy many years ago who was trying to adopt. He and his wife had to go through months and months of vetting and paperwork to be allowed to become adopted parents. You basically have to prove that you are fit to be a parent. And yet in this story a court basically says "hey, you wanna adopt this baby you found? Yeah? Here you go."
Sounds like this guy I knew should have moved to America. He and his wife could have just pulled up to an orphanage, said "I'll take that one", and been parents immediately - if this story is anything to go by.
PaulRobinson 1 hours ago [-]
The judge didn’t ask him if he wanted to adopt there and then in that precise second and that was that.
The judge asked if he was interested.
Perhaps the judge asked this knowing that the circumstances showed this was a caring man who had the child’s best interests at heart and had demonstrated through actions - and described through testimony we have not heard - his feelings towards the child when finding him.
They did not just get given the child. There was still a process. They visited the child in care. They filled in paperwork. They were vetted. They were asked if they’d like to look after the child over Christmas - not forever, not straight away. The process took a little time, it just took a lot less time than if the child entered care and they had to find other adoptive parents.
The most important variable to identify in this situation is capacity to love and care for a vulnerable child. Financial stability and good character still need to be there - and it sounds like they were identified before the adoption was completed - but the head start was there.
zemike 1 hours ago [-]
You can search for articles and you will find more info dating from the year 2000.
IIRC, there was a lengthy court “battle” to allow them to adopt, as the parents are a gay couple and that was not as openly accepted at the time. That’s why this story was so big back then and is still relevant today, it was a unique case.
Anon84 2 hours ago [-]
I can’t confirm or deny the Guardian story, but I do personally know someone who found a small baby in a bus in Kenya and preceded to adopt and raise her.
hartator 2 hours ago [-]
I feel adoption is either super easy or super hard. No one claims the system is fair. It can also be the article skipped on these difficulties for a better headline.
Digit-Al 1 hours ago [-]
> It can also be the article skipped on these difficulties for a better headline.
Thanks for the reply. That is certainly a possibility that I didn't think of. I guess they could possibly have thought that if he was caring enough to take time out of his day to call the police and look after the baby until they arrived that he might potentially make a good parent as well.
bell-cot 30 minutes ago [-]
> ... do they really offer abandoned babies to just anyone...?
NO - the 2nd sentence of the article says that the adoptive-father-to-be had "a good job in social care". In the same jurisdiction as the baby was found.
So he's not some nice-guy rando who called 911 - he's a vetted and experienced professional within the same social care system as the judge, who that judge might easily have looked into before "asking if he had any interest".
EDIT: Yeah, in the course of the court hearing where he was testifying about having found the baby, the judge was probably sizing him up, and asking him questions well beyond his "briefly witnessed, called 911" role.
XorNot 2 hours ago [-]
My understanding is there's a very - superficially weird - sort of logic at play with this though.
Basically if we're going to take a child not presently abandoned or in danger, and place them with someone, we need to know damn well that we're not worsening the situation for the child.
But if you have a child who was already abandoned and in danger, and you start looking after them unprompted, the situation for the child has already improved and almost any other action will worsen it - i.e. it's generally accepted that children being wards of the state is a worse outcome in almost all circumstances compared to a dedicated parent.
A comparable example I suppose would be the question of what's the best strategy for seeking help if you're lost: basically, statistically, it's approach the first person you see and ask for help. Because the occurrence rate of predators in the population is low, so the first person you see is unlikely to be one. But if you stand around for a while looking like you need help, well now you're obviously a target and the chances of someone who approaches you intending ill-intent rises.
1 hours ago [-]
Digit-Al 1 hours ago [-]
I guess, if you really think about it, a lot of the safety checking is to make sure that the person trying to adopt is not a predator who will abuse the child. In this case, someone who was like that would not have called the police and handed the child in, they would have just taken the baby to abuse; so his handing in the child to the authorities automatically ticked the "not a child predator" box. Thanks for helping me to think about this in a different way :-)
> A comparable example I suppose would be the question of what's the best strategy for seeking help if you're lost: basically, statistically, it's approach the first person you see and ask for help.
Ah yes, from the Paul Graham article on security. I bring that one up myself from time to time :-)
Here in the UK, you have to either pay a subscription fee or accept ALL of their tracking cookies in order to read their articles.
Digit-Al 3 hours ago [-]
I know a lot of people like to dump on Firefox, but a number of paywalls, including the Guardian one, completely disappear when you use it. For those that don't, some of them disappear if you use reader mode.
CTOSian 1 hours ago [-]
Or just toggle JS on their site mate
andrepd 3 hours ago [-]
Isn't that the choice people on hn claim to want to have? Let me pay for journalism and not be tracked please.
applfanboysbgon 3 hours ago [-]
You may be surprised to learn that there is more than one person on HN, and also that among the group of people made up of more than one person, some of them have different opinions than others.
wrecked_em 4 hours ago [-]
A great, beautiful story! :)
sevenseacat 3 hours ago [-]
What a lovely story, what a lucky family to have found each other!
wazoox 3 hours ago [-]
That's a good heartwarming story to start the weekend :)
The person finding the baby was the person who eventually adopted him. The judge asking the guy to adopt the baby was the same judge that performed the wedding of the couple doing the adoption. Just so many great details.
(I will acknowledge that it is not impossible to imagine. I have known people who have adopted the children of strangers after reporting their family for abuse.)
He was not left in a bin or dumpster. This is not an ideal way to give up a baby for adoption, but don’t assume he was unwanted, or unloved: you don’t know - or seem able to imagine - the full story.
[1] https://vimeo.com/1092249009
Here in the UK, I used to work with a guy many years ago who was trying to adopt. He and his wife had to go through months and months of vetting and paperwork to be allowed to become adopted parents. You basically have to prove that you are fit to be a parent. And yet in this story a court basically says "hey, you wanna adopt this baby you found? Yeah? Here you go."
Sounds like this guy I knew should have moved to America. He and his wife could have just pulled up to an orphanage, said "I'll take that one", and been parents immediately - if this story is anything to go by.
The judge asked if he was interested.
Perhaps the judge asked this knowing that the circumstances showed this was a caring man who had the child’s best interests at heart and had demonstrated through actions - and described through testimony we have not heard - his feelings towards the child when finding him.
They did not just get given the child. There was still a process. They visited the child in care. They filled in paperwork. They were vetted. They were asked if they’d like to look after the child over Christmas - not forever, not straight away. The process took a little time, it just took a lot less time than if the child entered care and they had to find other adoptive parents.
The most important variable to identify in this situation is capacity to love and care for a vulnerable child. Financial stability and good character still need to be there - and it sounds like they were identified before the adoption was completed - but the head start was there.
IIRC, there was a lengthy court “battle” to allow them to adopt, as the parents are a gay couple and that was not as openly accepted at the time. That’s why this story was so big back then and is still relevant today, it was a unique case.
Thanks for the reply. That is certainly a possibility that I didn't think of. I guess they could possibly have thought that if he was caring enough to take time out of his day to call the police and look after the baby until they arrived that he might potentially make a good parent as well.
NO - the 2nd sentence of the article says that the adoptive-father-to-be had "a good job in social care". In the same jurisdiction as the baby was found.
So he's not some nice-guy rando who called 911 - he's a vetted and experienced professional within the same social care system as the judge, who that judge might easily have looked into before "asking if he had any interest".
EDIT: Yeah, in the course of the court hearing where he was testifying about having found the baby, the judge was probably sizing him up, and asking him questions well beyond his "briefly witnessed, called 911" role.
Basically if we're going to take a child not presently abandoned or in danger, and place them with someone, we need to know damn well that we're not worsening the situation for the child.
But if you have a child who was already abandoned and in danger, and you start looking after them unprompted, the situation for the child has already improved and almost any other action will worsen it - i.e. it's generally accepted that children being wards of the state is a worse outcome in almost all circumstances compared to a dedicated parent.
A comparable example I suppose would be the question of what's the best strategy for seeking help if you're lost: basically, statistically, it's approach the first person you see and ask for help. Because the occurrence rate of predators in the population is low, so the first person you see is unlikely to be one. But if you stand around for a while looking like you need help, well now you're obviously a target and the chances of someone who approaches you intending ill-intent rises.
> A comparable example I suppose would be the question of what's the best strategy for seeking help if you're lost: basically, statistically, it's approach the first person you see and ask for help.
Ah yes, from the Paul Graham article on security. I bring that one up myself from time to time :-)