Nathan's Occasional Blog

You have GOT to be kidding me.  This is rediculous!

Blogging Baby —

Babies have such tough lives. After all, those disrespectful adults think that babies should just be adored, stared at, and cooed over. There’s no dignity. It’s – really – a violation of their human rights. Umm… what?

This isn’t a politically-motivated science fiction scenario – it’s an actual campaign by Calderdale Royal Hospital in West Yorkshire, U.K. The hospital administration has banned cooing over babies, and dolls in the obstetric wards hold signs saying, “What makes you think I want to be looked at?” Says one hospital staffer, in explanation, “We often get visitors wandering over to peer into cots but people sometimes touch or talk about the baby like they would if they were examining tins in a supermarket and that should not happen.”

I think everyone knows that the babies cannot be shopped for, like freshly-picked produce. But – do babies really have the right not to be looked at? Isn’t it biologically necessary that adults should adore babies? I agree withLabour MP Linda Riordan – this is “bureaucracy gone mad.”

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