The Abandoned Baby...

What would you call the parents of a child who became not only a Olympian at an young age but went to become one of the greatest gymnast that the world has seen - a member of the US dream team. I mean the parents would have to do a lot with the success of the child, isn't it? Indeed they had. But hold on to your judgments for sometime...

The child in consideration is none other than DominiqueMoceanu, the youngest of USA's magnificent seven. Dominique's father was focused right from the beginning in raising her to become a sporting star.

All this changed overnight many years later. After a sterling and successful career, when Dominique was about to become mom herself, a mysterious letter revealed an ugly family secret. When she was just 6 years old, Dominique's mother gave birth to another girl Jennifer , whom Dominique would never see or play with. For Jennifer was born without legs and Dominique's parents decided to give her up for adoption. Dominique's father was too hard focused on his target to raise his first child as a sporting star to keep a child born with disability.

Jennifer went on to be adopted by a very loving family who raised her with pride and dignity. Interestingly, Jennifer even without legs, went on to become a power tumbler, volleyball player and performer. Thanks to a clerical error during adoption that helped the two sisters have a emotional reunion many years back.

Contrastingly, for Dominique, though raised by her biological parents, had to emancipate herself from them. Allegedly Dominique's father siphoned - off millions of dollars of her Olympic prize money and even physically assaulted her.

Becoming a parent is a tremendous feeling and nothing short of blessing of the almighty. But parenthood is in accepting a child irrespective of gender, abilities and any other ‘criteria and raising them with love and care, without for a single moment thinking that we are doing any favour to our children. The greatest favour a parent does is to himself or herself – it is the labour of love.

But becoming biological parent does not always mean that they have parenthood; and parenthood need not be a function of giving birth to children, else the world would not have seen a Mother Teresa. Dominique’s father’s karma caught-up with him sooner or later – he eventually lost both his daughters one to his butcher merchant mentality and the other to his greed.

Very recently, an Australian couple, who had twin surrogatebabies in India, decided to leave back one of them based on gender. Despite repeated requests by the agency that helped them through surrogacy, they left back one of them and took only one of the babies with them. They reportedly already had a baby back in Australia and did not want to repeat that gender. Hence they just took back one of the twin surrogate babies.

How could they do something like this? Its beyond my comprehension - have we lost our heart? What would happen to the other twin baby left back in India? Will she grow-up like an orphan? What would be the emotional turmoil that that baby would go through … who will nurture her??? 

Not so long ago another Australian couple left behind theirsurrogate child in Thailand after they found that the child has been born with Down’s syndrome. The couple who also had surrogate twins decided to take the healthy child with them leaving the one born with syndrome behind them.

Is child nothing more than a commodity? Were these couples doing baby-shopping?

I am sure that karma will catch-up with these parents as well but my heart goes out to those babies who have no clue that their parents have abandoned them for life, for their own selfish drives.

In another controversial move few companies have started to give cash incentives to women workers for freezing their eggs. If you are wondering what freezing of eggs is – in very simple terms it is suspending motherhood without worrying for the ticking biological clock. Motherhood and corporate career have never gone hand-in-hand owing to the weird policies, at times or unidirectional ambition or due to chauvinistic male partners, at other times. So some companies want their successful women employees to suspend their motherhood or in simple terms pay them to freeze their eggs during the fertile years and suspend motherhood for another day.

Having a child, bringing-up the child and seeing him or her grow, take every little step forward is the most beautiful feeling in life. People who abandon their babies have lost the most valuable treasure on this planet. 

May every abandoned child find a family like Jennifer found, find parents like she found, who may not have given birth to her but nurtured her with the glowing love of parenthood. May such children blessed with hearts that love, hands that care and the ones who hold them to their bosom when they need a hug of reassurance. Humanity and parenthood is after all not completely dead on this world.