The call came in on the fire truck’s radio on a blazing hot summer afternoon: “Baby in a dumpster.”
“It didn’t specify alive or dead,” Patrick Pequet remembers.
He and fellow firefighters arrived within minutes, pulling into the rear parking lot of an apartment complex in the southwest quadrant of this sprawling city. Police were already there, as were the several residents who had frantically summoned them, standing near a blue dumpster crowded by discarded boxes, scattered trash and garbage bags.
In one of those bags, a baby had been crying. Now, only silence.
“They didn’t want to touch it,” Pequet says. “It was very still.”
A quarter century ago, prompted by a spate of abandoned babies in Houston, this state became the first in the country to pass a safe haven law allowing parents to relinquish newborns at designated places — without questions or risk of prosecution. Yet “Baby Moses” surrenders remain rare in Texas, and another series of abandoned infants since spring in the Houston area has prompted much soul-searching.
In June, a baby boy was left next to a clothing donation bin on the city’s southeast side and a baby girl in some bushes in Katy, a western suburb. Both were saved.
By August, two other babies had been found: in an industrial ditch in north Houston and in a trash truck’s compactor in a far northwest neighborhood. Both were dead.
“There apparently has been … a little bit of an epidemic on this,” a Harris County sheriff’s official noted during a media briefing near the ditch where the infant girl’s partially clothed body was discovered in August by a landscaping crew.
Statewide, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, at least 18 babies have been abandoned this year. The latest occurred just before Christmas at a Whataburger in San Antonio. A decade ago, the number was seven.
Whether there’s a pattern or common link in these tragedies is not clear. But they’re happening in a state with one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans — with no exceptions for rape or incest — and one of the highest birth rates.
Critics argue that’s no coincidence. Texas is ranked next to last for women’s health and reproductive care, according to the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, which supports independent research on such issues. And with legislators having repeatedly cut funding for that care, the percentage of women without health insurance is higher here than in any other state. This year, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered Texas public hospitals to track the cost of treating immigrants who are in the country illegally, potentially deterring women from seeking care for fear of being turned over to authorities.
“All of these intersectional things could be leading to this,” said Blake Rocap, a lawyer with the Sissy Farenthold Reproductive Justice Defense Project at the University of Texas at Austin. The chilling effect of the near-total abortion ban, he believes, is compounded by “abysmal” access to prenatal care, “particularly for people without private insurance, particularly for people without immigration status.”
And for all the angst every time a newborn is found, Republican leaders who control state government have long declined to fund an awareness campaign so that new mothers know where to turn should they decide that they cannot keep their baby.
In his 2½ years as a Houston firefighter and paramedic, Pequet has responded to several abandoned baby calls. Each child had been left in a dumpster. None survived.
He expected another grim outcome as he knelt on the ground that July afternoon in the apartment complex parking lot, a scene filmed by a resident on a cellphone.
The dark-haired newborn was still covered in the waxy substance that had protected him in the womb, and his umbilical cord was still attached. Pequet gently lifted him out of the trash bag and swaddled him in a small blanket another firefighter had ready. The moment felt intense. Pequet wondered whether the woman responsible would ever be located.
“We were probably the first people to hold the baby with any kind of good intentions,” he said later.
The infant, whom officials named Gabriel after the archangel protector, would live.
“It didn’t specify alive or dead,” Patrick Pequet remembers.
He and fellow firefighters arrived within minutes, pulling into the rear parking lot of an apartment complex in the southwest quadrant of this sprawling city. Police were already there, as were the several residents who had frantically summoned them, standing near a blue dumpster crowded by discarded boxes, scattered trash and garbage bags.
In one of those bags, a baby had been crying. Now, only silence.
“They didn’t want to touch it,” Pequet says. “It was very still.”
A quarter century ago, prompted by a spate of abandoned babies in Houston, this state became the first in the country to pass a safe haven law allowing parents to relinquish newborns at designated places — without questions or risk of prosecution. Yet “Baby Moses” surrenders remain rare in Texas, and another series of abandoned infants since spring in the Houston area has prompted much soul-searching.
In June, a baby boy was left next to a clothing donation bin on the city’s southeast side and a baby girl in some bushes in Katy, a western suburb. Both were saved.
By August, two other babies had been found: in an industrial ditch in north Houston and in a trash truck’s compactor in a far northwest neighborhood. Both were dead.
“There apparently has been … a little bit of an epidemic on this,” a Harris County sheriff’s official noted during a media briefing near the ditch where the infant girl’s partially clothed body was discovered in August by a landscaping crew.
Statewide, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, at least 18 babies have been abandoned this year. The latest occurred just before Christmas at a Whataburger in San Antonio. A decade ago, the number was seven.
Whether there’s a pattern or common link in these tragedies is not clear. But they’re happening in a state with one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans — with no exceptions for rape or incest — and one of the highest birth rates.
Critics argue that’s no coincidence. Texas is ranked next to last for women’s health and reproductive care, according to the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, which supports independent research on such issues. And with legislators having repeatedly cut funding for that care, the percentage of women without health insurance is higher here than in any other state. This year, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered Texas public hospitals to track the cost of treating immigrants who are in the country illegally, potentially deterring women from seeking care for fear of being turned over to authorities.
“All of these intersectional things could be leading to this,” said Blake Rocap, a lawyer with the Sissy Farenthold Reproductive Justice Defense Project at the University of Texas at Austin. The chilling effect of the near-total abortion ban, he believes, is compounded by “abysmal” access to prenatal care, “particularly for people without private insurance, particularly for people without immigration status.”
And for all the angst every time a newborn is found, Republican leaders who control state government have long declined to fund an awareness campaign so that new mothers know where to turn should they decide that they cannot keep their baby.
In his 2½ years as a Houston firefighter and paramedic, Pequet has responded to several abandoned baby calls. Each child had been left in a dumpster. None survived.
He expected another grim outcome as he knelt on the ground that July afternoon in the apartment complex parking lot, a scene filmed by a resident on a cellphone.
The dark-haired newborn was still covered in the waxy substance that had protected him in the womb, and his umbilical cord was still attached. Pequet gently lifted him out of the trash bag and swaddled him in a small blanket another firefighter had ready. The moment felt intense. Pequet wondered whether the woman responsible would ever be located.
“We were probably the first people to hold the baby with any kind of good intentions,” he said later.
The infant, whom officials named Gabriel after the archangel protector, would live.
