3 women, 3 babies, hard choices

3 women, 3 babies, hard choices

Joan Ryan
Thursday, July 15, 2004



The first woman was 33 and worked as a short-order cook in San Jose. She had two children who lived back home in Mexico. She couldn't burden her family with another one, and she had no means to support it herself. She kept her pregnancy a secret. She gave birth alone at home and left the newborn in a shopping cart behind Coconut Willie's Cocktail Lounge in San Jose in late June.

The second one was a girl of 17 who picked lettuce in a Salinas field. She told no one of her pregnancy, not even the older sister with whom she lived. Her parents were back in Mexico. She was on her own. She could barely figure out how to support herself. A baby was out of the question. Maybe she hoped for a miscarriage. Maybe for a miracle. Her baby was found crying in the waste of a portable toilet in the lettuce field in early July.

The third woman was 22 and cleaning rooms at the Days Inn in Palo Alto. She lived in a suburban neighborhood in Santa Clara with at least 10 members of her extended family. Construction workers last week found the decomposed remains of what police say was the woman's baby inside a garbage bag behind the motel.

Three women, three weeks, three abandoned babies.

more... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/15/BAG3C7LDPH1.DTL

Project Cuddle's hot line: 1-888-628-3353, or in Spanish, 1-888-483-2323.