Apparently, babies CAN be thrown away...

It's been a pretty outrageous couple of weeks for the American legal system. I'm going to hold off on my opinions over the recent Supreme Court decisions. But this story really gets to me, and it happened not too far from me.

It's the story from 2005 of a USC student who gave birth, then threw her baby into a trash dumpster. A homeless man found the baby's body later on. The coroner concluded that the baby had been born alive. The county DA tried twice to charge her with murder, but the judge wouldn't allow it. (The woman claims that the baby was stillborn, contradicting the coroner.) The DA wasn't left with a lot of options, so they worked out a plea deal.

She pled no contest to a child endangerment charge. (Does that make sense? If the baby was stillborn, how did she endanger it? The whole thing is screwy.) Her sentence? The 30 days she's already served. That's it. 30 days and a stern lecture from the judge, and you can throw your baby away.

Here's the kicker: it isn't the first time this has happened with this woman. The year before, in 2004, she went to an LA hospital because she was bleeding. She told the doctors then that she had given birth to a stillborn baby. But she didn't know where the baby's body was, and it was never found. She wasn't arrested that time.

So that's 2 dead babies, and she gets a total of 1 month in jail. It just shows how little we really value children in this society. Despite the fact that every law and regulation that's passed seems to be about protecting the children. We really don't care. This case just illustrates the point...