Homes offered for abandoned retarded baby

Press, 3 October 1983, Page 10

Homes offered for abandoned retarded baby

NZPA Boise Adoption offers trickled in for a five-day-old girl born without most of her brain and who was found bruised, cold, and abandoned in a toilet trash can, while right-to-life groups moved to make sure the baby’s treatment was continued.

The infant, named Ashley by child welfare workers, was three months premature and born with just a brain stem, said Dr Margaret Watkins. “Because she is missing 85 per cent of the brain she never will be capable of anything but minimal functions, such as breathing,” she said. Ashley also suffers from respiratory problems common to premature infants with underdeveloped lungs and is on a respirator. She was listed in a criticial condition yesterday at St Luke’s regional medical centre in Boise, the Idaho state capital. With the police unable to find Ashley’s mother, the state has been granted tern-

prorary custody, and more hearings to determine permanent custody were to be held this week.

Ashley, born on Tuesday in a restroom stall at Boise State University’s science education building, was dumped in the trash can and covered with paper towels to hide her. The 21b (900 gr infant later was found when students heard her cries.

Her plight had stirred several offers of adoption before her extraordinary abnormality became known on Friday, said state health and welfare officials, and a few inquiries still arrived yesterday, as well as more offers of money and clothing for the abandoned infant.

Ashley’s permanent custody will be decided by the courts, and it is expected she will continue as a ward of the state. Her doctor, Ms Watkins, may submit a recommendation about her future care, said Lindy High, a Health and Welfare Department spokeswoman. All the standard proce-

dures in cases of homeless children were in effect, Mrs High said. A closed prehearing conference would be held tomorrow and a judge would hold a hearing later in the week on custody, she said. The court proceeding decided only the child’s custody, not whether her life-support system, should be disconnected.

Dr Watkins said that babies with impairments such as Ashley’s had a life expectancy of three to six months, but some can live much longer with proper care.

She said that the baby was lying quietly in the intensive care unit. “They’re not vigourous criers under the best of circumstances,” she said.

The police have determined that the mother was a young white woman and know her hair colour and blood type. She was probably guilt-ridden, frightened and possibly taken by surprise by the early birth, said a psychologist, Marty Seidenfeld.