While the Alaska State Senate overwhelmingly voted in favor of establishing infant safety devices to allow struggling parents to anonymously surrender newborns in times of crisis, Anchorage Democrat Löki Tobin wanted no part of it.
She and Sen. Bert Stedman (R-Sitka) were the only holdouts against Senate Bill 9, which passed 18-2 last month.
If approved by the State House and signed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy, the bill would allow parents to relinquish their infant in a “baby box” – a climate-controlled environment with an automatic lock and constant video surveillance – which immediately alerts emergency services. These devices are aimed at saving babies from being abandoned in the streets.
While 22 other states already allow for this, pro-abortion Tobin said she opposes such efforts.
Prior to the vote, Tobin rose in opposition, claiming the anonymity of surrendering an infant might lead to women being abused, and she asserted that traffickers might turn over babies without a mothers consent.
“The potential misuses for these devices far outweigh the benefits,” she argued, while claiming that baby boxes don’t include safeguards like waiting periods, informed consent, or permission from the father to relinquish his child.
Tobin also expressed concern that teens might use the baby boxes to “hide or conceal their pregnancy from their parents.”
“Their parents’ right will be denied,” she said.
Ironically, these are some of the exact same issues that pro-life advocates raise when warning about the abuses women endure from abortion.
Alaska law allows minors to undergo abortions without their parents’ knowledge or consent. In fact, girls can be taken to an abortion facility by those who do not have their best interests in mind and who want the preborn baby killed.
While Tobin opposed the bill aimed at saving infants, she has yet to express any misgivings about the potential abuse or coercion of women who are pressured into aborting their babies against their will.
Her focus on abortion has instead emphasized so-called “privacy rights,” unfettered access, and opposition to any perceived barriers.
2 Comments
well there are always legal issues when adopting a baby with an unknown past especially if the drop off was done by a trafficker, a teacher, a school nurse, a school counselor, a boyfriend, a parent or grandparent, or even a husband. There could always be family members who didn’t know and would had wished they know twenty years later their relative had a baby just like grandmothers finding out school nurses aborted their daughter’s baby while she was a minor and still in high school.
Despite Alaskans needing to stop running to government to add one more thing for taxpayers to finance, despite legal challenges. Tobin and everyone else need to look at the reality that there is just not enough support from Alaskans for babies of single parents, a baby that has a deformity and disability, wives whose husbands don’t want one more child; there is a need for providing baby boxes so we don’t end up reading another headline if possible of another Baby-Jane doe dead on Cordova Street in Anchorage Ak.