Baby Dumping Issue in Malaysia

Assalamualaikum and Hello to all readers JJ

For me as a muslim, we believe that CHILD is a priceless gift from Allah SWT to us. Nowadays, baby dumping is a social crisis and has a chronic increase as many cases are occurring in Malaysian society. However, this scenario also had been more serious from day to day in the newspaper or mass media. Teenager parents give birth in a motel room and leave the child for dead in a garbage. A girl gives birth in a school bathroom at night and throws the baby into the garbage. These stories relate to one of the most frightening realities of our culture today.

           How could this problem keep on happening? There are many factors that cause this problem continuously occurring in Malaysian society :

·       Lack of religious upbringing

We don’t deny that the lack of religious upbringing is the main reason for baby dumping cases to occur. Usually, groups of adolescents are involved in the case of abandoned babies. Lack of religious teachings and guidance to life cause them to lose direction in life and engage in negative symptoms, such as free association. Adolescents who are engaged in free sex tend to result in unwanted pregnancy before marriage. In this situation, teens who lose their faith measure inhumane and would leave their newborns in places like public toilets, litter bins, side drains and so on.

·       Poverty

Poverty is also another factor that causes child dumping. Poor social welfare systems, not capable to pay the medical bills and not financially capable of taking care of a child are more likely the factors to dump the baby. Political conditions, such as difficulty in adoption proceedings, may also contribute to child dumping.

·       Lack of parental care supervision

Sometimes, parents are always busy with their work. Teenagers must pay attention to them a lot. They need love and they need friends to talk about their problems. Some teenagers like to take opinions from their friends of different gender. When that happens, some of their boyfriends take advantage to do free promiscuity. When unwanted babies are born they are dumped.

  

·       Family Break-up

Family break-ups happen after a long period of misunderstandings, fighting and unhappiness. Sometimes they happen suddenly and it is hard to understand why there needs to be change at all. Children are mostly affected by this kind of situation. If both their mother and father decided to a divorce and one cannot raise their child alone, tendency is that they will dump their child. This child will become homeless and found himself alone. 

·       Peer Influence

Peer influence also leads to cases of baby dumping occurred. This is because at a young age, teens are very easily influenced by their peers. This problem becomes worse when they associate with negative peers. Negative friends will invite young people to do things outside the boundaries of religion and norms of society, such as going to places of entertainment such as disco, taking drugs and doing free association. Many teens who fall into promiscuity, and eventually reach a dead end to find herself with unwanted pregnancy. In desperation, they have to discard their babies.

      There must be a solution for every problems, so does to baby dumping issue. The ways to curb this baby dumping issue are :

·       Campaign

Campaign also one of the ways to curb this baby dumping issue. A campaign to stop baby dumping is one of the solutions to raise awareness of this issue to the public. One of the campaign’s focus is “Kami Prihatin”. The campaign was launched on 23 March 2010, aimed to raise awareness among the community on child abuses and abandoned babies. Several activities were organized to promote child protection policy, including producing a documentary and publishing community awareness advertisements in mass media

·       Responding to Unwanted Pregnancy
Individuals experiencing unwanted pregnancies must receive support and services. Communities should examine their capacity to provide the range of supports and services needed by individuals experiencing unwanted pregnancies. These services must also be publicized; people cannot use services that they do not know about. Finally, education efforts should strive to increase communication among youth, families, and communities. Increased communication may minimize the shame and secrecy associated with an unwanted pregnancy and make young people more likely to take advantage of supports and services in their families and communities.

·       Sexuality Education
Baby dumping presumably results from unwanted pregnancy. To prevent baby dumping, it is therefore ultimately necessary to educate individuals about sexuality. We supports age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education, and recommends that schools and communities provide comprehensive sexuality education to all youth and families.

·        Mass Media

   Mass media also one of the ways to prevent baby from being abandoned. It is the nearest medium and the best way to communicate and educate teenagers. It all about how to protect themselves and give useful knowledge to avoid from involve in anything that can take them to this problem. Besides that, the suitable sex therepists or psychologist could be presenters of a special programme on sex education and set the stage for more personal discussions in homes and schools.

·        The government
The government also must involve overcoming this problem from step by step and taking this matter seriously. Baby hatch is indeed good way to help single mother who cannot afford to take care the baby and nowadays 'sekolah harapan' and Kewaja has already been opened for person who involved unwanted pregnancy.

" Having sex after marriage is safer and it can reduce the abortion and baby dumping rate. It also helps us be more responsible and not to have sex just to satisfy our lust "