Helping Parents Choose Wrong. Op-ed piece in The New York Times by Patrick Murphy, public guardian of Cook County IL, decries the bill just passed by the New York State legislature allowing legally sanctioned abandonment of newborns:

I work at the bottom of the judicial food chain, in juvenile

court, and the clients I represent there, abused and

neglected children, have the least clout of any in the legal

system. Daily I see their lives laid waste. In some cases it is

inevitable: what some parents do to children cannot be

undone by social workers, judges and lawyers. But too often

the misused influence of politicians and interest groups is

causing unintended misery.

But IMHO his opposition is for the wrong reasons — he mainly fears the discouragement of the adoption process. I think the problem with the law is, first and foremost, that it strips away any remaining residue of responsibility, thoughtfulness or obligation from the decision to have a child. It should be thought of as one of those benchmarks by which we measure the worth of our society, like several others I can think of off the top of my head — our incarceration rate; our eagerness for state-sanctioned murder; and our glorification of the mediocre and unthinking insofar as someone like George Dubya leads the pack for President. Just for starters.