Also at ThisBlackSistasPage.
Just what is it about this phenomenon of women killing women for their close-to-term fetuses? The shrinks had better be working on why something like this happens, and the sociologists had better start talking about how we stop it. Not only do pregnant moms have to worry about abusive boyfriends or husbands, but they now have to wonder about friends, acquaintances as well as total strangers.
One thing I’ve noticed is that murders like these seems to happen among lower-middle class women and poor women. I think it is a modern outgrowth of what I think is years of baby worship among Americans, with a by-product promulgated from those in the right-to-life movement. They’ve been able to get to this subset of Americans.
As a result, Americans fixate on babies, but they don’t necesarily appreciate what motherhood means. They fixate on new life, sometimes without fully supporting and providing what the child will need to grow, to thrive, and be educated, clothed, and socialized. They all seem to say, later for all that, which is one of my quarrels with the right-to-life movement–and with Nadya Suleman.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to get responses saying that I hate children or something. I certainly do not hate infants, toddlers or older children. That is not the point. Neither am I putting down women and couples who know what it is to be mothers and parents. I fully support women and couples having wanted children…within reason and with common sense and resources. But it’s also true that many women do have babies as a means of self-expression and to create meaning for themselves by using their bodies.
I think, though, some other women are watching this fecundity with more than a touch of jealousy and anger. The fact is that the attention a mother-to-be gets is not like the attention a mom pushing a carriage with a three- or four-year-old or running around town with a ten- or a fifteen-year-old each day. I think this is part of what triggers the jealousy. Nobody pays attention to them. Nobody appears to care about their lives as well. And what is worse, they don’t care about themselves.
These women want a baby, or they can’t have a baby, or they want a biracial baby, or a girl or a boy. They may already have two or three children themselves and suddenly, they want another. And they are murdering in order to get these babies. There is no color or culture which seems exempt from this behavior, but so far this crime is delineated by class. You don’t hear about upper- or middle-class women pulling this kind of thing.
These women plan these atrocities thinking that they can get away with it. They don’t. And each one thinks that they can.
Nine times out of ten, the infants die after being cut out of the womb, defeating the whole sordid purpose. The expectant mothers die, butchered brutally and horribly. I’m shaking my head as I write this, thinking how can a woman could visit this kind of thing on another woman or another human being–it’s something out of Nazi experimentation. How can anyone not hear screams of someone being done away with? Now it comes out that suspect Julie Corey lived in the same building as Darlene Haynes. If it is true that the infant found with Corey is Darlene Haynes’ newborn daughter, then this is only the second child I have heard of to have survived such an ordeal.
According to the Boston Herald, Darlene Haynes had had a hard life. An intellectual zero with an IQ of 70, Haynes was ready to bring a fourth daughter and child into the world:
[H]er family claimed she was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and an attachment disorder. The report also states that the state Department of Mental Retardation was involved in her care.
Her uncle, Karl Whitney, told Gordon that Haynes was raised by her paternal grandmother, Joanne Haynes, because her birth mother was abusive, the report said.
Haynes, who attended the Developmental Learning Center in West Boylston, had her first child, Jasmen, 5, when she was 18. Her daughter Lillian Rose, 3, was born in March 2006. The father of the children is unknown, and Joanne Haynes was granted custody, probate court records show. Haynes shared legal custody of the youngest, Kristine, with [ex-boyfriend Roberto] Rodriguez, but the dad had physical custody, according to a Nov. 17, 2008, judgment.
Darlene Haynes functioned at the level of a 12- or 13-year-old. As with many developmentally disabled people, she was described as being very trusting and open. Yet Haynes was not that insensible about herself and her surroundings. She had shared with a relative a growing suspicion that her movements were being watched.
A restraining order against Roberto Rodriguez was issued recently, because he was accused of domestic violence during Darlene’s pregnancy. He is the father of Haynes’ daughter Kristine, 1, and the as-yet-unnamed newborn. In TV news reports, he was shown swearing vengeance against “the monster.” Naturally one would suspect the boyfriend with the domestic violence paper trail, but this time, it wasn’t the case.
Like I said, I don’t get it all, and I had a minor in psychology, but I certainly get that this phenomenon among women seems to be growing, or perhaps the mainstream media is becoming more cognizant of it and milking it for ratings. Like with drug addicts, the right people need to intervene, right now.
