On December 21st a pregnant Kalynn Moore, 26, of Jersey City went to the hospital. The doctors there discovered that her baby’s heart rate was dangerously low. They performed an emergency Caesarean birth. The doctors worked vigorously for twenty minutes to stabilize young Bashere Davon Moyd Jr, but alas they could not save him.
They wrapped Bashere in a blanket and put a hat on his little head. Mom held him for a half an hour before they took his body away to the hospital morgue.
Bashere’s parents contacted a funeral home so they could properly say goodbye to their son who lived such a brief time. When the funeral home arrived at the hospital to pick up Bashere’s body, the hospital said he is not here. We threw his body out in the trash.
The parents are understandably devastated. The hospital says that while it regrets the action but states that the baby was stillborn and thus not a person, so he went in the trash can. The parents deny that the child was stillborn. Either way, this is just the latest evidence of how much we have devalued life. Stillborn or not, the baby was alive just moments ago. But the obvious does not matter in the eyes of NJ law.
[NJ.com] It became evident the body had been discarded and the trash already was gone, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said.
DeFazio said his office is looking into the matter but that at this point there does not appear to be any criminal intent on the part of the employee who apparently discarded Bashere’s body.
…
DeFazio said if a baby’s death is an attended stillborn — meaning doctors are present — there normally would not be an autopsy. He noted a stillborn baby is not considered a person under New Jersey law, but an autopsy could “perhaps” determine whether Bashere had lived for some period of time.
That definition of person gets narrower every day. The hospital is insisting that the baby was stillborn in order to cover its tracks and limit its legal liability. Perhaps it was stillborn, I don’t know. Either way, it is evidence of how insensitive and apathetic our culture is toward life.
When we can wrap a deceased baby in a blanket and put a cap on his head. Then turn around and throw the body in the garbage because under law it is not a person, this culture is very sick.
The Jersey City police are earnestly trying to find the body in the landfill. I hope they find him so that he can be buried with the respect he deserves.
Many thanks to Helen Rivera for the link to this sad story.
