Daley Ponderings

We are hoping to have a memorial service March 2nd, in Pittsburgh.
We would love to have you come.
We have yet to find a location, email me if you are interested in further details.

Prayer requests:
 Continued from last time: that the coroner would not find any/enough reason to recommend that the District Attorney continue this to trial.
 That the inquest would only take one day, so that this doesn't get prolonged into March (or longer).

Copyright ©2003 Linda Wightman

When they put the sugar back into baby food, I should have known it was a bad sign.

Progress is often a tidal creek, not a river. Advancement is not inevitable. We gain in one era, or in one area, and lose in another.

The late 1970's and early 80's were good years for having babies in America. Women had rediscovered that childbirth is a good thing, a normal function, and were dragging their doctors along with them. Hospitals scrambled to keep up.

We were the rebels, the revolutionaries. The children of the 60's grown up. Our parents had been cheated by medical and cultural "advancement", giving birth under anesthesia, flat on their backs on a delivery table, their legs unnaturally elevated. Labor was often artificially induced, and the cesarean section rate was high. Once born, the babies were whisked away to nurseries, tended by professional nurses and fed commercial formula. As soon as possible their diets included solid food-commercial baby food, loaded with sugar and salt to suit the mother's taste.

A number of you have asked why is this happening, ie. how did the district attorney, coroner, homicide detective and police officers get involved in the first place. Good question. One might wonder...

Whenever 911 is called involving a baby, they send police officers along with medical support, to investigate a possible child abuse situation. So, Heather and our midwife were separated and questioned by a homicide detective. (Heather was naked, cold and hungry, but the police refused her requests, except to allow her to get a towel to cover herself)

After Isaac died, the coroner performed an autopsy, as is required by law, whenever the cause of death is not evident. An inquest was then done, to determine whether or not a crime had been committed, and whether there was someone to blame for it or not.

The coroner said that our midwife had been "grossly negligent" in her care of Heather and Isaac, and therefore should be charged criminally. Fortunately, much of the evidence that was presented at the hearing was extremely biased at best, and outright lies at worst. During an inquest, there is not an opportunity for the "defense" to cross-examine, as an inquest isn't supposed to have a prosecution and defense, but everybody there knew which person was on which side. Due to the incompetence of the district attorney and the coroner's office, many witnesses were not able to attend the hearing as they had not been told about the hearing the first time, and then the second time, they were subpeonead 12 hours in advance of the hearing.

The coroner passes along his recommendation to the district attorney, (who was the prosecutor in the inquest), and the district attorney decided whether or not he thinks that he can win a criminal trial, as he doesn't want to lose a trial, because that looks bad for him politically, and as the he is hoping to be elected judge someday, he is very conscious of the publicity that he gets.

The district attorney and coroner fully understand that the only witnesses to this event believe that no crime was committed, but we live in a country where our liberties are slowly being eroded away as time goes on, and we will soon have no rights to make our own decisions, if they conflict with the popular beliefs of the times. Hm... seems a little similar to Ayn Rand's, "Atlas Shrugged". Different issues, but similar in terms of the political/social/liberty issues.

An open inquest has been scheduled for February 6th. From various sources, it seems that the point of this inquest is to see about indicting our midwife.

Prayer requests:
  That the coroner would not find any/enough reason to recommend that the District Attorney continue this to trial.