Invasion of the Baby-Snatchers
Our irrational fear of infant abduction could be causing real harm.
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The movement to ward off kidnappings—to "harden the target," in hospital-security parlance—began in 1989, when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) published the first edition of its cautionary manual for healthcare professionals, Guidelines on Prevention of and Response to Infant Abductions. That book, now in its ninth edition, calls for installing alarms in maternity ward stairwells, locks on every door, and security cameras for the hallways. The NCMEC also recommends that each newborn be footprinted and photographed (in color) within two hours of its birth and "quad-banded"—tagged with a pair of ID bracelets matching those worn by its mother and father. The book further suggests that a sample of the baby's cord blood be stored (to allow for later DNA analysis), and that all medical staff be given appropriate security badges. Some hospitals change the color of those badges every day, like pins at the museum, and tell the mothers which colors to expect.
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But there's something fishy about the newly fortified birthing centers. The truth is that no one is trying to steal your baby. It doesn't matter what kind of ID tags your hospital employs, or how many surveillance cameras are mounted in the hallway. The incidence of nonfamily infant abductions is so impossibly low—the actual crime so rare in practice—that it hardly matters at all. Yes, the attempt at Fort Hood points to the fact that a small handful of newborns are stolen every year. Yet our obsession with security has turned the figure of the baby-snatcher into a paranoid fantasy. The precautions that are now in place aren't merely unjustified. They're doing more harm than good.
Someone tell Lifetime.