Should society be so harsh with such a mistake?

The Malaysian government, in a cabinet decision declared that anyone who dumps a baby causing the child to die can be tried for murder and sentenced to death.

At first reading, it is obvious that anyone who causes the death of someone, be it a baby or an adult, ought to be tried for murder and face the death sentence.

In the latest decision, the problem that arises concerns the dumping of babies. The surprising fact is that most doers of such deeds are either mothers or parents of the babies. Since it is the mother or the parents who have committed this foul deed, should we not wonder where the natural love of the mother has gone to?

If we were to ponder on what has caused such mothers or parents to heartlessly throw away the lives of their flesh and blood, we could perhaps come out with some solutions to the problem of baby-dumping, for it must be realised that those young mothers cannot be all so heartless as we think. I sincerely believe those young mothers felt as much, if not more, pain and anguish as any of us in this issue. I believe if there was a solution to the problems they face, they would certainly hug their babies close with protection and reach out for the solution.

I think society has been too harsh with young women who has failed in their path to adulthood. We should consider whether we need to be so harsh, considering that it is a wrong which could happen to even the best of them. We could perhaps turn to God and think how God in His compassion would have wanted us to deal with it.

Who among us has never done a wrong in our lives? Mistakes are plentiful and we learned from those mistakes sometimes. This commitment of mistakes is something which can happen even to the best among us for we are not God. Only God is perfect. All we need do is to think back on our youth and remember the recklessness as well as the carelessness of our inexperienced years to understand that mistakes are so often made. Some mistakes, no matter how genuine they may be, have to be punished of course but such punishment ought to teach and correct rather than to leave the culprit with no way out, pushed to the wall where the person had no alternative. but to escape by committing an even worse act.

We have often read of young women who fall in love, sometimes with the wrong guys. Love and passion could have taken the women away from caution and reason. This is possible to everyone of us in such situations, be you a man or a woman. Let us not be in denial. Let us honestly face the fact that such things do and can happen even to the best educated or moral among us because at the time of love, everything seems so right. That is one reason society ought to introduce sex education so that action brought on by love and passion can happen with some kind of knowledge and safety.

Even with sex education, things can still go wrong for we are all humans. Now when things go wrong and a baby is the consequence, society ought to teach and correct these wayward-perhaps individuals to understand the wrongs they have done and have in place a system of assisting these young parents or of placing the new-born under an adoption scheme if the young mothers are unable to cope with the babies.

At present, society could be too harsh with such unfortunate women who found themselves pregnant out of wedlock. Unable to face such a society, the young mother has no one to turn to for solutions and without such solutions, society has left them with the only way out of their dilemma, to perform the dastardly act of dumping the consequence or be condemned to a kind of hell on earth to herself and her family. Even her own child would be condemned to be a bastard for life. The best option for her is pretty obvious. Yet again, due to inexperience and insufficient knowledge she commits an act which can be fairly easy to trace to her and with the new cabinet decision, there will be no reprieve if the sentence is mandatory death. But then death could be the best gift to her for then she has been punished and the trauma of having to kill her very own beloved flesh and blood will not haunt her any longer as death is the escape route.

But that need not be the case. She is just another human who has committed a wrong and even if society is compassionate enough to accept it as such, she still bears the burden of being a mother before she is ready to take on the responsibility. That is the law of nature. And as she matures, she would have learned her own mistake. With a compassionate society, the child would be safe as there would be no need for the trauma of removing the consequences. Imagine that! In each case two lives would have been saved, two lives that God sent to our world.

When can society be more Godly, be more forgiving like the Almighty, be as compassionate as God and help those less careful or inexperience with knowledge to teach and correct where necessary. It is the way of God and I believe that is what God would want us to be. Let us not just pray but also think of how He would want us to be. Just as He created all of us, He loves us and in our love for Him, we ought to think of Him and what He truly would have us show in our love and understanding of Him, of His compassion and love.

The law ought to be humane and carried out with compassion