“What could drive a mother to abandon her newborn baby to an almost certain slow death?” people reading Tuesday’s front page must have thought. An acceptable answer is hardly imaginable, at
least not in civilised society.
Still, these things do happen and it’s important to focus attention on them so that the kinds of problems that often lie at the root of such frankly beastly behaviour may come to light and can be better addressed. Make no mistake; the latter is a collective responsibility, because the social ills that usually characterise such cases and their consequences tend to have an impact on the entire community.
The story is that a 24-year-old woman first showed up at Louis-Constant Fleming Hospital in Marigot, but was told to go St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC). This decision was since questioned by some, but it supposedly had to do with her being a Dutch-side resident with Dutch-side health insurance.
Whether the latter is actually true remains to be seen, but that’s reportedly what they were told and believed. There is also no indication her condition could be deemed urgent at the time or that there was reason to believe she would decide to have the baby in her car.
She allegedly did and then dumped the infant in a garbage bag between Le Galion and Orient Bay. It doesn’t take a doctor to figure out that the child was at acute risk of dying by suffocation, which apparently would have happened were it not for the crabs that saw it as a food source and tore the bag, allowing air to come in.
The picture is indeed shocking, but should serve to remind all that there are people on the island in circumstances that make them capable of such extreme action for whatever reason. Obviously no valid excuses can be offered, but the possible underlying factors still should be looked into.
The worst examples sometimes serve to teach us the most valuable lessons.
