Men equally responsible for dumping babies

Penang state executive councillor says men should be hauled to court just like women were for abandoning babies.

GEORGE TOWN: The Penang government wants the biological fathers of abandoned babies to be hauled to court along with their mothers.

State Executive Councillor Chong Eng said that was the only way to make men realise that they too must shoulder the blame for unwanted pregnancies that led to the dumping of newly born babies by helpless mothers.

“It’s time for men to be punished as well to make them realise their equal responsibility over the dumped babies,” said Chong Eng, the Padang Lalang assemblywoman who is in charge of the Women, Family and Community Development portfolios.

She was commenting on the case of dead twin baby girls found wrapped in a towel in an empty cupboard at a flat in Lebuh Macallum here Monday.

Police have said that the post mortem report confirmed the babies were of ethnic Mongoloid origin.

They have detained three people to assist in investigations into the incident.

Welfare Department statistics revealed that 472 babies were abandoned in the country between 2005 and 2010 while between 2011 and 2013, 46 women were convicted of the crime of baby dumping.

Chong Eng felt that punishing the mothers alone for abandoning their babies would not resolve the problem neither would it serve any social justice to the babies abandoned.

Stressing that more proactive measures were needed to eradicate this social ill, she proposed educating the lay public first against putting negative labels on unmarried mothers.

She said studies showed that these mothers abandoned their newborns due to fear of the repercussions of being an unwed, single mother.

“Society should restrain from passing judgment on these mothers, so that they would not be forced to hide their pregnancies or abandon their babies,” Chong Eng told newsmen at a break during the state assembly session.

She felt single mothers should not be punished as they were already “punished” with being pregnant out of wedlock.

She said the Women’s Welfare Council and the Women’s Centre for Change were among the various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that could offer assistance to such pregnant mothers, who had nowhere to go.