On successive weeks I saw articles in the Hinton News that I thought were tragically connected. First was a letter to the editor from Kati Hatfield pleading for more support for child foster care. Second was “Two arrested on murder charges in Summers County”. Third was “Candlelight vigil held to honor Haley Weikle”.
The Hatfield letter related “a crisis that is under-represented and obscure “. She said West Virginians have over 7200 children in foster care. The exact number is always changing as kids age out, kids disappear, and incoming kids are constantly nudging up the total.
The large turnout and excellent speakers at the vigil attested to how traumatic the murder of a four-year-old daughter has been for Summers County. REACHH organized the program both to console people and to highlight that such a tragedy is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to child abuse.
We know the system lacks the necessary caregivers with the frequency of NECCO campaign signs along the highway begging for more homes. We know Child Protective Services is underfunded and understaffed. We know that the WV legislature has failed to address that situation for years.
It would rather squander a special session arguing how completely to restrict a woman’s right to determine how to deal with a pregnancy that sometimes may be unintended or even if intentional, dangerous in different ways. The problem of abortion is the problem of unwanted children.
Clearly Haley Weikle was an unwanted child. She was most likely neglected if not abused before being put to death by parents out of their minds. A couple years ago a woman in Greenbrier County killed five of her children after having been referred to CPS which never had the wherewithal to intervene. Most child abuse of course is unreported but even more scandalous is how hard it is to alleviate when it is reported.
The fact is that it is very hard for society at large through the state to substitute for the love of a mother and hopefully a father and other family members. Grandparents often step in. Bless their hearts. Bless all the foster parents who do their best.
And bless all the women who become pregnant with the power to determine the fate of their fetuses, deciding who can provide a full measure of love and support for the challenge of child-rearing. So many kids are being born already addicted to drugs and society is doing a lousy job caring for them. Many will survive just fine but some will reproduce the lack of purposefulness from which they came “because they weren’t raised up,” as people used to say.
Many in politics today loudly proclaim “every life is a miracle.” But when the parents are not up to the job, do they step forward to raise the miraculously unwanted? So shuck the sanctimoniousness about every heartbeat being sacred and let the women choose.
Chris Chanlett
