WAYNE COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA PROMOTES NEWBORN ABANDONMENT AS RESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR THROUGH MISGUIDED POSTER CAMPAIGN

For Immediate Release

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Why has Wayne County, North Carolina chosen National Adoption Awareness Month to encourage young women to abandon newborns anonymously, rather than obtain the assistance they need? Wayne County has initiated a poster education campaign to promote North Carolina's Safe Surrender law, which was enacted in 2001. The Safe Surrender law allows mothers of newborns less than seven days old to abandon them anonymously to other adults who the abandoner considers "responsible."

The posters depict a young baby framed with the phrases, "No one will ever know how scared you are," "No one will ever know you had this child," and "You can't care for him."

These posters goad scared young pregnant girls to give birth unattended and abandon their newborns to strangers. Responsible county officials should instead be encouraging these young women to seek medical help, counseling, and to tell their parents of their predicament.

Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization, the world's largest advocacy group for adoptee rights, considers the current poster campaign to be a misguided attempt to boost a bad law. Bastard Nation calls for this

poster campaign to desist and all posters associated with it to be removed.

For more details on the organization's stance, see our position paper entitled, "Legalized Abandonment Laws" at http://www.bastards.org/activism/legalized-abandonment.html.