{"id":1927,"date":"2012-08-03T14:27:28","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T13:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=1927"},"modified":"2012-08-03T14:27:36","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T13:27:36","slug":"where-do-kids-fit-in-kidnapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2012\/08\/03\/where-do-kids-fit-in-kidnapping\/","title":{"rendered":"Where do Kids fit in Kidnapping?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What with Seb Coe’s Sports Day dominating the news at the moment, it was only by chance that I noticed\u00a0this story<\/a>: Ann Pettway, convicted of kidnapping a 19-day-old child from a hospital 23 years ago, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.<\/p>\n

Pettway’s defence team had suggested that the child, Carlina White, had been brought up in a stable, loving and happy home<\/a>; this was disputed by the prosecution. \u00a0But we can imagine all kinds of questions based on this sort of scenario: if A kidnaps a child from B, and provides that child with a better life than it would have had had it stayed with B, would that be a defence? \u00a0A mitigation at least? \u00a0In effect, this is what happens (or, at least, is the intention) when a child is taken into care. \u00a0Clearly, there’s a difference in that such removals are endorsed by the law and the state; but if that’s the only difference, then the kidnapping itself seems to have dropped out of moral contention – who did it becomes much more important.<\/p>\n

Anyway: there’s something else – related to these questions, I suppose – that struck me about the way that this case has been reported. \u00a0It has to do with how we think about family dynamics, the role of the family, and the status of children. \u00a0It’s the matter of who the victim is.<\/p>\n

Much attention has been paid to Joy White, Carlina’s biological mother. \u00a0So, for example, the New York Daily News<\/a><\/em> has an article that emphasises Joy’s distress:<\/p>\n

\u201cI had only spent 19 days with my daughter,\u201d Joy White told\u00a0Ann Pettway\u00a0as family members on both sides stifled sobs or formed their hands in prayer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI bathed her. I changed her. I put lotion on her. I put bows in her hair. She got a 104-degree fever, and we brought her to the hospital, and the doctors said she would have to be treated for a week. How could anybody rip intravenous tubes out of a sick baby and take her?<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day I wondered, would the person treat her like a mother? Every day I wondered, was my baby fed? Doctors gave me sleeping pills, but sleep never came.\u201d<\/p>\n

White didn\u2019t get to see her daughter\u2019s first steps, or help her blow out birthday candles. She didn\u2019t get the hugs, the kisses, the valentines drawn with crayon. She couldn\u2019t help her shop for her prom dress. But maybe there was a reason she was named Joy: at least, Carlina didn\u2019t die when she was stolen, feverish, from the nursery. She\u2019s alive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, admittedly, it’s possible that attention is being paid to Joy because Carlina\u00a0seems to have distanced herself from the whole case. \u00a0This seems understandable to me; Carlina could quite coherently treat Pettway as her “true” mother in at least some sense – it was Pettway who, after all, brought her up and socialised her – in which case, it wouldn’t be surprising that she’d want to avoid close involvement with the trial, for pretty much the same reason that anyone would want not to get too close to a high-visibility trial in which their mother-in-some-sense would probably end up going to jail. \u00a0So already there’s a range of interesting questions suggested here about “true” motherhood (or parenthood) and what that implies.<\/p>\n

But even so… Suppose you or I were kidnapped. \u00a0There wouldn’t be much question but that you or I were the victim of the crime. \u00a0Our families might attract sympathy, but they wouldn’t be the centre of moral attention. \u00a0Now go back to the A and B example from a moment ago, in which B’s child actually ends up benefitting from the kidnap. \u00a0We’ll assume that the child was too young to have formed any deep attachment to B, and so would not be traumatised by the move.<\/p>\n

In a sense, it would be strange to describe the child as the victim<\/em> of a kidnapping, just as it would be strange to describe a child taken into care as a victim of that process (again, assuming that it goes well). \u00a0Note that this would be the case even if B was, overall, a good enough parent, despite being not quite as good a parent as A: the child would still be better off after the kidnapping, albeit not by as much; so its status as a victim would still be open to question.<\/p>\n

So we seem to be left with two options: either there’s no victim to this crime, or the victim is B. \u00a0The first option is counterintuitive. \u00a0The second is also a bit strange – but we do seem to focus on the distress of parents of the very young if and when they’re kidnapped in a way that we don’t in respect of those who’re older.<\/p>\n

All of which raises a question: what’s the gradient of the shift in attention? \u00a0What is it that leads us to worry more about the child than the parent? \u00a0When does that happen, and is that point morally important? \u00a0Does the child only really matter when it can be distressed by the kidnap? \u00a0And if it is better off as a result, what happens then?<\/p>\n

What’s the place of the kid in the kidnap?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What with Seb Coe’s Sports Day dominating the news at the moment, it was only by chance that I noticed\u00a0this story: Ann Pettway, convicted of kidnapping a 19-day-old child from a hospital 23 years ago, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison. Pettway’s defence team had suggested that the child, Carlina White, had been […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[511,472],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-thinking-aloud"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere do Kids fit in Kidnapping? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2012\/08\/03\/where-do-kids-fit-in-kidnapping\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where do Kids fit in Kidnapping? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What with Seb Coe’s Sports Day dominating the news at the moment, it was only by chance that I noticed\u00a0this story: Ann Pettway, convicted of kidnapping a 19-day-old child from a hospital 23 years ago, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison. 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