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Child abandonment

Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring in an illegal way, with the intent of never resuming or reasserting guardianship. The phrase is typically used to describe the physical abandonment of a child. Still, it can also include severe cases of neglect and emotional abandonment, such as when parents fail to provide financial and emotional support for children over an extended period (sometimes referred to as "throwaway" children). An abandoned child is referred to as a foundling (as opposed to a runaway or an orphan). Baby dumping refers to parents leaving a child younger than 12 months in a public or private place with the intent of terminating their care for the child. It is also known as rehoming when adoptive parents use illegal means, such as the internet, to find new homes for their children. In the case where child abandonment is anonymous within the first 12 months, it may be referred to as secret child abandonment.

In the United States and many other countries, child abandonment is usually treated as a subset of the broader category of child abuse. (However, states have laws allowing a parent to permanently surrender a child at a designated safe haven "where they will not be prosecuted." ) In the United States it is punishable as a class 4 felony, and a second or subsequent offense after a prior conviction is a class 3 felony (see classes of felonies) with different state judicial systems treating it with varying severities and classifications. Child abandonment may lead to the permanent loss of parental rights of the parents. Some states allow for reinstatement of the parental rights, with about half of the states in the US having had laws for this purpose. Perpetrators can also be charged with reckless abandonment if victims die as a result of their actions or neglect.

Official statistics on child abandonment do not exist in most countries. In Denmark, an estimate of child abandonment prevalence was 1.7 infants per 100,000 births, with another source suggesting higher prevalence in Central and Eastern European countries such as Slovakia with data suggesting 4.9 per 1,000 live births.

Causes

 * Poverty and homelessness are often causes of child abandonment. People living in countries with poor social welfare systems (i.e. China, Myanmar, Mexico, the United States, and other countries) who are not financially capable of taking care of a child are more likely to abandon their children because of a lack of resources. In some cases the parents already have a child or children, but are unable to take care of another child at that time.
 * In societies where young women and young men are looked down upon for being teenage or single mothers and single fathers, child abandonment is more common.
 * Children born out of the confines of marriage may be abandoned in a family's attempt to prevent being shamed by their community.
 * Physical disability, mental illness, and substance abuse problems that parents face.
 * Children who are born with congenital disorders or other health complications may be abandoned if their parents feel unequipped to provide them with the level of care that their condition requires.
 * In cultures where the sex of the child is of utmost importance, parents are more likely to abandon a baby of the undesired sex. Similarly, people may choose to pursue the often controversial option of sex-selective abortion.
 * Political conditions, such as war and displacement of a family, also cause parents to abandon their children.
 * Additionally, a parent being incarcerated or deported can result in the involuntary abandonment of a child, even if the parent(s) did not voluntarily relinquish their parental role.
 * Disownment of a child is a form of abandonment that entails ending contact with and support for one's dependent. Disownment tends to occur later in a child's life, generally due to a conflict between the parent(s) and the child, but can also occur when children are still young. Reasons include: divorce of parents, discovering the true paternity of a child, and a child's actions bringing shame to a family; most commonly, breaking the law, teenage pregnancy, major religious or ideological differences, and identifying as LGBT.

Effects on survivors

 * Possibility of experiencing abuse and neglect in institutionalized care
 * Low self-esteem stemming from feelings of guilt about being at fault for being abandoned
 * Separation anxiety: feelings of anxiety about being separated from parents or caregivers
 * Attachment issues: difficulty becoming emotionally attached to and trusting other people, especially caregivers
 * Abandonment issues, characteristic of abandoned child syndrome, including social alienation, guilt, anxiety, clinginess, insomnia and nightmares, eating disorders, anger issues, depression, substance abuse, and traumatic reenactment through romantic relationships
 * Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), referred to as posttraumatic stress disorder of abandonment.
 * Depending upon the severity of their symptoms, children who have developed certain maladjusted tendencies in social interaction may be diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder or disinhibited social engagement disorder.
 * For children who are abandoned in dangerous places, such as dumpsters, doorsteps, and other public areas, exposure to the elements and physical injury are distinct possibilities.

Financial cost
In 2015, the United States' government spent over $9 billion to support 427,910 children who were in foster care.

Child abandonment laws
Child abandonment is illegal in most of the world, and depending upon the facts of the case and laws of the state in which it occurs could be prosecuted as a misdemeanor or felony criminal offense.

Prevention

 * Providing access to sex education and to family planning resources, like contraception, and abortion can help prevent people who cannot take care of, or do not want to raise, children from becoming pregnant in the first place.
 * Evidence has shown that, when bans on abortion are lifted, the number of abandoned, abused, and neglected children goes down in response. However, access is an issue. In the United States, 87% of all counties, and 97% of all rural counties, do not have any access to abortion services.
 * Governmental assistance can be provided in the form of parental counseling, post-natal services, mental health services, and other community support services for parents who are at a higher risk of abandoning their children because of age, support, physical ability, mental illness, or poverty.

History
Historically, many cultures practiced abandonment of infants, often called "infant exposure." Children were left on hillsides, in the wilderness, near churches, and in other public places. If taken up by others, the children might join another family either as slaves or as free family members. Roman societies, in particular, chose slaves to raise their children rather than family members, who were often indifferent towards their children. Although being found by others would allow children who were abandoned to often survive, exposure is sometimes compared to infanticide—as described by Tertullian in his Apology: "it is certainly the more cruel way to kill... by exposure to cold and hunger and dogs." Despite the comparison, other sources report that infanticide and exposure were viewed as morally different in ancient times.

In the Early Middle Ages, parents who did not want to raise their children gave them to monasteries with a small fee, an act known as oblation, and in times of social stress, monasteries often received large numbers of children. By the high Middle Ages, oblation was less common and more often arranged privately between the monastery and the parents of the child. Sometimes, medieval hospitals cared for abandoned children at the community's expense. Still, some refused to do so because being willing to accept abandoned children would increase abandonment rates. Medieval laws in Europe governing child abandonment, as the Visigothic Code, often prescribed that the person who had taken up the child was entitled to the child's service as a slave. Conscripting or enslaving children into armies and labor pools often occurred as a consequence of war or pestilence when many children were left parentless. Abandoned children then became the wards of the state, military organization, or religious group. When this practice happened en masse, it had the advantage of ensuring the strength and continuity of cultural and religious practices in medieval society.

Early Modern Europe saw the rise of foundling homes and increased abandonment of children to these homes. These numbers continued to rise and peaked when 5% of all births resulted in abandonment in France around 1830. The national reaction to this was to limit the resources provided by foundling homes and switch to foster homes instead such that fewer children would die within overcrowded foundling homes during infancy. As access to contraception increased and economic conditions improved in Europe towards the end of the 19th century, the number of children being abandoned declined.

Abandonment increased towards the end of the 19th century, particularly in the United States. The largest migration of abandoned children in history occurred in the United States between 1853 and 1929. Over one hundred and twenty thousand orphans (not all of whom were intentionally abandoned) were shipped west on railroad cars, where families agreed to foster the children in exchange for their use as farmhands, household workers, etc. Orphan trains were highly popular as a source of free labor. The sheer size of the displacement and the complications and exploitation that occurred gave rise to new agencies and a series of laws that promoted adoption rather than indenture. By 1945, adoption was formulated as a legal act with consideration of the child's best interests. The origin of the move toward secrecy and the sealing of all adoption and birth records began when Charles Loring Brace introduced the concept to prevent children from the orphan trains from returning to or being reclaimed by their parents.

Notable contemporary instances of child abandonment include homicidal neglect by confinement of infants or children, such as in the affair of the Osaka child abandonment case or the affair of two abandoned children in Calgary, Alberta, Canada by their mother Rie Fujii.

Current situation
Today, abandonment of a child is considered to be a serious crime in many jurisdictions because it can be considered malum in se (wrong in itself) due to the direct harm to the child, and because of welfare concerns (in that the child often becomes a ward of the state). For example, in the U.S. state of Georgia, it is a misdemeanor to willfully and voluntarily abandon a child, and a felony to abandon one's child and leave the state. In 1981, this distinction was upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court against a parent's argument that it denied parents the right to travel and thereby denied parents the equal protection of the laws. 'Rehoming' is still legal in Arkansas where, in 2015, state legislator Justin Harris made national headlines by rehoming two young adopted children.

Many jurisdictions have exceptions to abandonment laws in the form of safe haven laws, which apply to babies left in designated places such as hospitals (see, for example, baby hatch).

In the UK abandoning a child under the age of two years is a criminal offence. In 2004 49 babies were abandoned nationwide with slightly more boys than girls being abandoned.

Abandonment is rife in Malaysia, where between 2005 and 2011, 517 babies were dumped. Of those 517 children, 287 were found dead. In 2012, there were 31 cases, including at least one instance of a child being tossed from a window of a high rise apartment.

Persons in cultures with poor social welfare systems who are not financially capable of taking care of a child are more likely to abandon them. Several American states are moving towards passing legislation to prevent rehoming of children post adoption. However, national legislation may be needed to protect children from being rehomed in all states.

State programs for facilitating anonymous child abandonment

 * Anonymous Birthing allows pregnant mothers to give birth to their child without revealing their identity or claiming any ownership over or legal obligation to the child. Different countries wait varying lengths of time from 2–8 weeks before putting the child up for adoption to allow mothers to return to the hospital and reclaim the child. Anonymous birthing is most often implemented as measure to prevent neonaticide and has been successful in multiple countries. Police in Austria report a 57% drop in neonaticides after the country passed a law allowing for anonymous birthing and free delivery in 2001. Anonymous birthing provides the opportunity for mothers to disclose relevant health history to later be shared with the child and adoptive family, as well as access to hospital care to reduce risk during birth. In some states, France for example, mothers who choose anonymous birthing undergo counselling and are informed of available support structures to help them keep the child. Mothers who are seeking to anonymously abandon their child at birth may avoid anonymous birthing due to increased interaction with hospital staff and the possibility of undergoing counselling.
 * Baby boxes provide a safe and anonymous way to abandon children, typically newborns, rather than resorting to infant exposure or neonaticide. Baby boxes can be found in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, South Korea, and the United States. Advantages of baby boxes include a greater degree of anonymity for parents abandoning their children and a guarantee that the child will be found and attended to. However, children are sometimes placed in baby boxes with existing issue or injury and baby boxes are under-utilized and costly to operate. It is also debated if baby boxes are an accessible option for rural mothers who may not be willing to travel to abandon their children.
 * Safe haven laws allow parents of a child, typically a newborn child but age can vary, to abandon the child at a place of local authority such as a hospital, fire station, or police station with no further question. Some states allow the parent to reclaim the child within a certain timeframe. Safe Haven Laws passed in the United States in 1999 and have since been adopted in Canada, Japan, France, and Slovakia. It is debated if safe haven laws prevent child abandonment or neonaticide. As with baby boxes, one study suggests that mothers in rural areas are not willing to travel to abandon their children and would not be willing to travel to a hospital to do so. As of 2017, 3,317 babies have been surrendered via safe haven laws in the United States.

National law and effects on child abandonment
China's One Child Policy: In 1979 China introduced its one-child policy which set up penalties for families that chose to have more than one child. Women were compelled to undergo a surgical implantation of an IUD following the birth of their first child and tubal ligation if they were to have another child. Families that disobeyed the law were levied a fine and lost their right to many government services, including access to health and educational services. Nevertheless, transgressions of the law most certainly occurred. Consequently, over the course of over three decades, hundreds of thousands of children, the majority of which were girls, were abandoned and required caretaking. Non-governmental organizations stepped in to assist with the re-housing of these girls, leading to the international adoption of over 120,000 Chinese children. Today, China's fertility rate has not quite returned to the rate of replacement (the birth rate that will maintain population size under conditions of zero net immigration/emigration). In fact, in the years since the relinquishing of the policy, China's fertility rate has only risen .04 per family.

Vietnam War: During and following the Vietnam War, it is estimated that roughly 50,000 babies were born of American fathers and Vietnamese mothers. A large contingent of these children were either unwanted due to the circumstances of their conception or unable to be cared for due to the lack of available resources and assistance in the war-torn country. Locally, these children were known as "children of the dust." Operation Babylift was established by the US government in an effort to bring over 3,300 children, many but not all of whom were abandoned, orphaned, or mixed-race, leading to fears of their exploitation, to Western countries to be adopted, with varying degrees of success. Non-governmental organizations attempted to alleviate the problem by setting up international adoptions and other rehoming methods but were largely ineffective. To this day, attempts are being made to link American veterans to children that they may have fathered during their time in Vietnam as well as children to their families in Vietnam.

Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu: During the rule of Communist politician Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania underwent drastic changes to its populace. Ceaușescu, in an attempt to form a robust and young population, outlawed methods of contraception and encouraged the creation of large families with many children. Much like during the Fascist period of Italian history, incentives and cultural praise were offered to parents who produced many children. Ceaușescu established Decree 770 which outlawed abortion and contraception for all women, except those who were over 40, had already borne 4–5 children, had life-threatening complications during pregnancy, or who became pregnant through rape or incest. In the following years, Romania's birth rate nearly doubled. However, due to a lack of resources necessary to care for the abundance of children, thousands were abandoned or left to die. Other women resorted to unsafe forms of abortion carried out by people without medical training. The problem persisted until the coup that overthrew Ceaușescu in 1989. Following the coup, Romania's birthrate steadily declined for the following decades. Today, the birth rate has dropped to 1.52 births per woman, under the rate of replacement.

In literature
Foundlings, who may be orphans, can combine many advantages to a plot: mysterious antecedents, leading to plots to discover them; high birth and lowly upbringing. Foundlings have appeared in literature in some of the oldest known tales. The most common reasons for abandoning children in literature are oracles that the child will cause harm; the mother's desire to conceal her illegitimate child, often after rape by a god; or spite on the part of people other than the parents, such as sisters and mothers-in-law in such fairy tales as The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird. In some chivalric romances, such as Le Fresne and the Swan-Children, in the variant Beatrix, some children of a multiple birth are abandoned after the heroine has taunted another woman with a claim that such a birth is proof of adultery and then suffered such a birth of her own. Poverty usually features as a cause only with the case of older children, who can survive on their own. Indeed, most such individuals are of royal or noble birth; their abandonment means they grow up in ignorance of their true social status.

Abandonment
One of the earliest surviving examples of child abandonment in literature is that of Oedipus, who is left to die as a baby in the hills by a herdsman ordered to kill the baby, but is found and grows up to unwittingly marry his biological mother.

In a common variant on the abandonment and rediscovery of an infant, the biblical story of Moses describes how the Jewish infant is abandoned by his mother and set to float in the Nile in a reed basket, in hopes that he will be found and nurtured; as planned, the child is discovered and adopted by the queen of Egypt, thus gaining a higher social status and better education, as well as a more powerful position than his birth family could have given him. A similar story is told of other heroes who eventually learn about their true origins only as adults, when they find they are able to save their original parents or family by wielding power from their adoptive status, while making use of an education that sets them apart from their peers. The theme is also carried through in the case of many modern superheroes, most famously Superman (see Modern Media below). Mark Twain tweaks the traditional "upgrading" of the foundling's social status by having the child's twin, who is powerful by birth, experience the "downgrading " of his position in a switch planned by the two children, in "The Prince and the Pauper".

In many tales, such as Snow White, the child is actually abandoned by a servant who had been given orders to put the child to death. Other tales such as Hansel and Gretel has children reluctantly abandoned in the forest by their parents since they were no longer able to feed them.

Children are often abandoned with birth tokens, which act as plot devices to ensure that the child can be identified. This theme is a main element in Angelo F. Coniglio's historical fiction novella The Lady of the Wheel, in which the title refers to a "receiver of foundlings" who were placed in a device called a "foundling wheel", in the wall of a church or hospital.

In Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, a recognition scene in the final act reveals by these that Perdita is a king's daughter rather than a shepherdess, and so suitable for her prince lover. Similarly, when the heroine of Le Fresne reveals the brocade and the ring she was abandoned with, her mother and sister recognize her; this makes her a suitable bride for the man whose mistress she had been.

From Oedipus onward, Greek and Roman tales are filled with exposed children who escaped death to be reunited with their families—usually, as in Longus' Daphnis and Chloe, more happily than in Oedipus' case. Grown children, having been taken up by strangers, were usually recognized by tokens that had been left with the exposed baby: In Euripides's Ion, Creüsa is about to kill Ion, believing him to be her husband's illegitimate child, when a priestess reveals the birth-tokens that show that Ion is her own, abandoned infant.

This may reflect the widespread practice of child abandonment in their cultures. On the other hand, the motif is continued through literature where the practice is not widespread. William Shakespeare used the abandonment and discovery of Perdita in The Winter's Tale, as noted above, and Edmund Spenser reveals in the last Canto of Book 6 of The Faerie Queene that the character Pastorella, raised by shepherds, is in fact of noble birth. Henry Fielding, in one of the first novels recognized as such, recounted The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. In the case of Quasimodo, the eponymous character in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the disfigured child is abandoned at the cathedral's foundling's bed, made available for the leaving of unwanted infants. Ruth Benedict, in studying the Zuni, found that the practice of child abandonment was unknown, but featured heavily in their folktales.

Still, even cultures that do not practice it may reflect older customs; in medieval literature, such as Sir Degaré and Le Fresne, the child is abandoned immediately after birth, which may reflect pre-Christian practices, both Scandavian and Roman, that the newborn would not be raised without the father's decision to do so.

Upbringing
The strangers who take up the child are often shepherds or other herdsmen. This befell not only Oedipus, but also Cyrus II of Persia, Amphion and Zethus and several of the characters listed above. Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf in the wilderness, but afterward, again found by a shepherd. This ties this motif in with the genre of the pastoral. This can imply or outright state that the child benefits by this pure upbringing by unspoiled people, as opposed to the corruption that surrounded his birth family.

Often, the child is aided by animals before being found; Artemis sent a bear to nurse the abandoned Atalanta, and Paris was also nursed by a bear before being found. In some cases, the child is depicted as being raised by animals; however, in actuality, feral children have proven to be incapable of speech.

The theme of young boys being raised by leading women of the early Mongol Empire is prominent in sources such as the Secret History of the Mongols. For example, the young Shigi Qutuqu was found wandering a destroyed Tatar camp, he was taken to either Genghis Khan's wife Börte or mother Hoelun to be raised.

In adulthood
The pattern of a child remaining with its adoptive parents is less common than the reverse, but it occurs. In the Indian epic Mahabharata, Karna is never reconciled with his mother, and dies in battle with her legitimate son. In the Grimm fairy tale Foundling-Bird, Foundling Bird never learns of, least of all reunites with, his parents. George Eliot depicted the abandonment of the character Eppie in Silas Marner; despite learning her true father at the end of the book, she refuses to leave Silas Marner, who had actually reared her.

When the cause of the abandonment is a prophecy, the abandonment is usually instrumental in causing the prophecy to be fulfilled. Besides Oedipus, Greek legends also included Telephus, who was prophesied to kill his uncle; his ignorance of his parentage, stemming from his abandonment, caused his uncle to jeer at him and him to kill the uncle in anger.

Older children
When older children are abandoned in fairy tales, while poverty may be cited as a cause, as in Hop o' My Thumb, also called Thumbelina, the most common effect is when poverty is combined with a stepmother's malice, as in Hansel and Gretel (or sometimes, a mother's malice). The stepmother's wishes may be the sole cause, as in Father Frost. In these stories, the children seldom find adoptive parents, but malicious monsters, such as ogres and witches; outwitting them, they find treasure enough to solve their poverty. The stepmother may die coincidentally, or be driven out by the father when he hears, so that the reunited family can live happily in her absence.

In a grimmer variation, the tale Babes in the Wood features a wicked uncle in the role of the wicked stepmother, who gives an order for the children to be killed. However, although the servants scruple to obey him, and the children are abandoned in the woods, the tale ends tragically: the children die, and their bodies are covered with leaves by robins.

In modern media
Foundlings still appear in modern literature; this is a partial list of examples:
 * In George Bernard Shaw's stage play Major Barbara, industrialist Andrew Undershaft, a foundling himself, intently searches for a foundling to assume the family business.
 * Superman may be seen as a continuation of the foundling tradition, the lone survivor of an advanced (but almost-completely extinct) civilization who is found and raised by Kansas farmers in a pastoral setting, and later discovers his alien origins and uses his powers for good.
 * Charlie Chaplin's movie The Kid revolves about the Tramp's efforts to raise an abandoned child.
 * In the graphic novel Aqua Leung, the main protagonist is a prince who is whisked out of a castle under attack in a basket-like device and then found by a couple and raised on land so that his father's enemies do not find him. He returns to the seas to fulfill the prophecy thought to be his father's but that was actually his.
 * Elora Danan, in the film Willow, and Lir, in the novel The Last Unicorn, both continue the tradition of foundlings abandoned because of prophecies, and who fulfil the prophecies because of their abandonment.
 * In the last book of The Chronicles of Prydain, Dallben reveals to the hero Taran that he is a foundling; in a story set in the same world, "The Foundling," Dallben himself proves to be a foundling as well.
 * The protagonist Thorby of Robert A. Heinlein's 1957 novel Citizen of the Galaxy is a foundling sold as a slave on a remote planet. He is bought and freed by a beggar who educates and inspires him, then learns from multiple kind foster families.  He later discovers that his parents were killed for opposing slavery in the galactic conglomerate that they owned and that he inherits, and he carries on their work.
 * The character Leela from Futurama was a foundling, given to the Ophanarium and a note in an alien language to make people believe that she was an alien rather than a mutant; she would have been forced, in the latter case, to live in the sewers with the other mutants.
 * Several foundlings appear in Terry Pratchett's Discworld: most notably Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, who was found, as a toddler, among the ruins of a caravan party that had been attacked by bandits, and was then surrounded by the bodies of the adults.
 * The character of Mozzie, from White Collar, is a foundling, left in a basket with only a bear.
 * In some cartoons, wily characters may disguise themselves as foundlings. This may be accomplished by the character dressing as a baby and lying in a bassinet or basket on a doorstep, perhaps with a note adding to the ruse. This was parodied in the 2006 movie Little Man.
 * In The Flintstones, Bamm-Bamm was abandoned on the Rubbles's doorstep and eventually adopted by them.

title: Child abandonment


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Talk:Child abandonment

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[Untitled]
I think we need to make a distinction here with the increasingly-common practice of societal encouragement of new mothers to "abandon" their infants at hospitals, firehouses, etc., instead of throwing them into dumpsters and trash cans. -- Zoe

Agreed. nooooooooooooooo removing bizarre sentence in this context ( "It is hoped she will be able and willing to resume taking care of him.")

 * Is it bizarre because she should obviously not be allowed to do so, or because you can not imagine that she would change her mind, or because the prison term has obviously taught her to be able and willing again? - Patrick 17:22 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that this sentence is correct: "Today, abandonment of a child is considered to be a serious crime in many jurisdictions, because the result is that the child and the other parent, if any, often end up on welfare. " COuldn't this be considered mala in se? I'm going to edit it as such. Vedek Wren 18:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Um, you clearly need to get informed about the complex U.S. child support enforcement system, which is specifically and expressly driven by the need to prevent absent parents from offloading their parental responsibilities onto the government. The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement has a handbook online that sort of explains the system. .  Also try searching Google for AFDC and TANF.  The major objective of turning AFDC into TANF in 1996 was to reduce the overall welfare caseload, and as part of that, Congress mandated that the states improve interstate child support enforcement. If the custodial spouse and children go on welfare as a result of nonpayment of child support, the custodial spouse is required to assign her right to child support to the government.  Then the government goes after the noncustodial spouse to make that person pay for the cost of supporting their kids and ex-spouse on welfare.  Every state today has a "Child Support Enforcement" or "Child Support Recovery" office which chases after child support deadbeats.  See, for example, the Utah Office of Recovery Services.  The FBI also investigates the worst cases under the federal Child Support Recovery Act of 1992.  --Coolcaesar 18:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I almost forgot to mention the most burdensome part of the 1996 law. All employers in the United States are required to report all new hires to their state's new hire reporting system so that their Social Security numbers can be checked against national lists of deadbeat parents.  Search Google for "new hire reporting" and you'll see how every state has a New Hire Reporting site that specifically references child support enforcement.  --Coolcaesar 18:09, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the point of just about anything Coolcaesar has just said. While it is an interesting look into abandonment/child support issues in the U.S. the whole world is not the United States. I don't feel that having such an intense focus on just one country is in any way beneficial to the article. EttaLove (talk) 21:55, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

child abandoment is very commen all around the world. i think that we should do something about it. if you know that you wont be able to soport a child then don't have one..

the following do not work together:

 * 1) almost every 18 seconds a child loses their parents
 * 2) this means that there are about 470,052 new orphans each day and 1,734,480 each year

there are only 86400 seconds in a day. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.209.155.167 (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

abandament
If the legal guardian leave a child at the other guardians for over a week without any contact what can the other guardian do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.57.108.39 (talk) 20:53, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Common arguments against and for child abandonment
I removed this section for two reasons. One, it is unsourced. This does not alone warrant removal, but it does raise the question as to whether or not it provides any value to the article. Two, it doesn't make a lot of sense. The argument against child abandonment is that children should be raised in families rather than a foster care system. The argument for it is that there'd be no birth-based social distinctions. Both assume that it is possible to either force all people to never abandon a child or force all people to always abandon a child. Neither is possible so I don't know why it would even be suggested. Since the statements are unsourced, impossible, of questionable application (and logic alone forces one to wonder who seriously considers abandoning all children to a foster system and who seriously thinks a problem can be solved simply by restating the problem), I feel there's no reason to retain the section. If more realistic and moderate arguments for and against the practice (such as whether or not child abandonment should or should not be considered a crime and to what extent) and these arguments can be sourced, it should return. - 67.187.245.98 (talk) 18:23, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Moses
If giving examples of historical abandonment to avoid being killed, Moses would be up there, wouldn't he? Mulp (talk) 22:52, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Child Abandonment in Fiction
Would this be better off split into it's own article? Right now it's taking up the bulk of the article, and that doesn't seem right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.212.135.81 (talk) 03:28, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that the article Baby dumping be merged into this article, as the subject and possible causes are already covered here, much of the material being duplicated. Baby dumping would be left as a redirect to this article. Arjayay (talk) 08:01, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree. Good arguments!  Lova Falk     talk   17:04, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Lead sentence is misleading/wrong
Currently the lead sentence says

 * Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting them.

This statement includes, but surely does not intend to include, giving a child up for adoption legally. What we need here is an accurate definition that is sourced, possibly paraphrased from a law in some jurisdiction but in a way that keeps it valid in other jurisdictions too. Meanwhile, I'm going to insert "in an extralegal way" into the lead sentence. Duoduoduo (talk) 15:57, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

False and misleading quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt
"Almost all children without parental care in the United States were in orphanages or foster arrangements until President Theodore Roosevelt declared the nuclear family was best able to serve as primary caretaker for the abandoned and orphaned"

Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919, long before the term nuclear family was in use. This quote needs to be removed from the article. It is factually wrong. Harold Darling (talk) 21:28, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

New Subsection: Child Abandonment Policy
I have a proposal for a new subsection of the article that I think would add value to the page. The subsection would discuss the policy aspect of child abandonment. First, it would delve into the various aspects of child abandonment laws in the U.S., such as what technically constitutes child abandonment and how the law varies state to state and globally. Next, the subsection would include how certain domestic and international policies affect rates of child abandonment nationwide. For example, how China's One Child Policy affected rates of child abandonment in China over the past few decades. Another example is how American involvement in the Vietnam War resulted in the abandonment of thousands of Vietnamese-American babies by Vietnamese mothers that were unable to care for children in the war-torn country. Lastly, in Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu's Decree 770, limiting rights to contraception and abortion in the late 1960s for the sake of developing a robust Romanian population, resulted in tens of thousands of babies being abandoned in maternity wards across the country. Nsjohnson28 (talk) 20:50, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Sources on Child Abandonment Policy
Nsjohnson28 (talk) 21:04, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Lack of statistics
For and anyone else interested: At the time of reading, the biggest issue I could identify with this page was the essentially complete lack of statistics for child abandonment. WHO and UNICEF, probably the biggest and most related organisations, don't seem to actually report on child abandonment in their statistics reports, and my impression from these sources and a few other papers is that abandonment lies on a sliding scale of child neglect, and abandonment is difficult to measure since it relies on an assumption of intent as well as behavior; secret child abandonment is apparently difficult to distinguish because the perpetrator might not be a mother: "Routine surveillance systems have a poor record to capture homicides due to omission of care or deliberate neglect. Abrahams et al, for example, found in their South African study that a number of mothers abandoned their babies with the intention that they would die or with the hope that they would be found alive. As the motive behind this kind of abandonment is often not known, official statistics often do not capture them as homicides" "Additionally, although the assumption is often made that it is the mother who leaves her infant at a baby hatch, there is increasing evidence that this is not necessarily true. It is frequently men or relatives who leave infants at baby hatches, which begs the question of what has happened to the mothers and have they consented to abandoning their children." The same author has seemed to publish a paper, but I can't access it: [1]

The best information I could find about this was in this paper, a review over 10 countries including the US and the UK, but it has very limited statistics: Originally, our ambition was to collect data that would enable us to compare the extent of child abandonment across the 10 countries, but this was not possible. Official statistics on the number of abandoned children do not exist in most countries. Mostly, we had to rely on studies based on media searches (cases reported in the media), but the results of these studies were not comparable across countries because of methodological differences. For Russia there is one source I have that points to 2%... it's possible it is recorded as part of the government there, I'm not really sure if that source is reliable enough anyway.

Based on this, I think I will mention a lack of data on the topic for these reasons as cited, and I'm surprised there is no mention distinguishing "secret child abandonment" versus "open" or "public" child abandonment, so I might add mention of that too.

[1] Browne, Kevin, Shihning Chou, and Kate Whitfield. "Child abandonment and its prevention in Europe." (2012). Darcyisverycute (talk) 23:42, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Child abandonment


text:
Guinn v. United States

Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), was a United States Supreme Court decision that found certain grandfather clause exemptions to literacy tests for voting rights to be unconstitutional. Though these grandfather clauses were superficially race-neutral, they were designed to protect the voting rights of illiterate white voters while disenfranchising black voters.

The 1870 ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution barred each state from denying the right to vote on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". In response, several Southern states, including Oklahoma, established constitutional provisions designed to effectively disenfranchise African Americans (including but not limited to American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS)) voters without explicitly violating the Fifteenth Amendment. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White held that Oklahoma's grandfather clause was "repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment and therefore null and void". The decision had little immediate impact, as Southern legislatures found other methods to disenfranchise Americans of Color.

Background
When Oklahoma was admitted to the Union in 1907, it had adopted a constitution which allowed men of all races to vote, in compliance with the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, state legislators soon passed an amendment to the Oklahoma constitution that required voters to satisfy a literacy test. A potential voter could be exempted from the literacy requirement if he could prove either that his grandfathers had been voters or had been citizens of some foreign nation, or had served as soldiers before 1866. As a result, illiterate whites were able to vote — but not illiterate blacks, whose grandfathers had almost all been slaves and therefore barred from voting or serving as soldiers before 1866. Most states that had permitted free people of color to vote in early decades of the 19th century had rescinded that right before 1840. Thus, even blacks who might have descended from families free before the Civil War could not get an exemption from literacy tests. In practice these were highly subjective, administered by white registrars who discriminated against black voters. Oklahoma's amendment followed those of numerous Southern states that had similar grandfather clauses in their constitutions.

The Oklahoma amendment provided:
 * "No person shall be registered as an elector of this state or be allowed to vote in any election held herein, unless he be able to read and write any section of the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma; but no person who was, on January 1, 1866, or any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to so read and write sections of such Constitution. Precinct election inspectors having in charge the registration of electors shall enforce the provisions of this section at the time of registration, provided registration be required. Should registration be dispensed with, the provisions of this section shall be enforced by the precinct election officers when electors apply for ballots to vote."

The amendment came into force before the election of November 8, 1910, was held. During that election, certain election officers refused to allow black citizens to vote; those officers were indicted and convicted of fraudulently disenfranchising black voters, in violation of the 15th Amendment and in violation of Oklahoma State Law.

Fifteenth Amendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides the right to not be discriminated against while voting on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude. In the view of some, the Grandfather Clause in the Oklahoma Constitution was void of racial discrimination since it looked at relatives prior to 1866 and not 1871, creating a loophole that allowed discrimination.

History of grandfather clauses
Grandfather clauses were first instituted as a means of allowing whites to vote while simultaneously disenfranchising blacks. The grandfather clause in Guinn v. United States involved requirement that a citizen must pass a literacy test in order to register to vote. At the time, many poor whites in the South were illiterate and would lose their voting rights if contingent upon passing a literacy test. The grandfather clauses were introduced since very few poor whites did not have a grandfather who had been able to vote. These clauses typically allowed poor, illiterate whites to register to vote if they had been able to vote before 1867 or if their ancestors could have voted then, creating a loophole. The laws had time limits, which were used to try to get as many white voters registered as possible before the laws were challenged in court. The modern expression 'grandfathered in', despite its links with this racial history, is not generally associated with it.

Case
The case was argued before the Supreme Court on October 17, 1913. It represented the second appearance before the Court of John W. Davis as United States Solicitor General and the first case in which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a brief. After the case was argued, the Court ruled that the grandfather clause of the Constitution of Oklahoma was created and intended to exclude as many illiterate black people as possible and include as many illiterate whites as possible. The number of black citizens allowed to vote under the clause approximately equals the number of white citizens barred from voting. This is undoubtedly proof of discrimination and differences in classifying whites and blacks into two classes of illiterates. Therefore, the entire amendment regarding illiteracy in voters is wholly unconstitutional, violating the 15th Amendment. The clause was implemented as a way to try to avoid violating the 15th Amendment while still disenfranchising black voters. The previous conditions of servitude based on the race or skin color of people rendered them incapable of gaining literacy or meeting the ambiguously formed loopholes within said clause. The convictions of Guinn and Beal were upheld.

Decision
The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Guinn v. United States together with Myers v. Anderson, which concerned a grandfather clause in the Maryland constitution. In its decision published on June 21, 1915, the Court found "the grandfather clauses in the Maryland and Oklahoma constitutions to be repugnant to the Fifteenth Amendment and therefore null and void". In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White held that the grandfather clause was clearly designed to interfere with the voting rights protections of the Fifteenth Amendment even though it was racially neutral on its face.

Opinions
Chief Justice White wrote the majority opinion, writing that the Oklahoma law brings race-based discrimination "into existence since it is based purely on a period of time before the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment and makes that period the controlling and dominant test of the right of suffrage." The decision was joined by all eight justices who participated in the case; there was no dissenting opinion.

Aftermath
Even though Guinn v. United States seemed to be a major step for black voters in the South, it conveyed a false sense of victory. Oklahoma immediately implemented a new voting statute which restricted voter registration, stating that "[a]ll persons, except those who voted in 1914, who were qualified to vote in 1916 but who failed to register between April 30 and May 11, 1916, with some exceptions for sick and absent persons who were given an additional brief period to register, would be perpetually disenfranchised." After Guinn in Oklahoma, similar constitutional clauses were struck down in former slave states in the South such as Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia, but just like Oklahoma, these states found other ways to disenfranchise black voters, mainly through poll taxes. Many kept literacy tests in place as only the use of grandfather clauses had been struck down, the result being the only substantive change was poor whites as well as blacks were disenfranchised.

After 23 years, the Supreme Court struck down the new Oklahoma statute in Lane v. Wilson. The Court ruled that the new statute still violated the Fifteenth Amendment because they were "operated unfairly against the very class on whose behalf the protection of the Constitution was here successfully invoked." Guinn successfully paved the way for judicial intervention regarding voter discrimination and disenfranchisement of specific groups, although it did not immediately provide enfranchisement of black voters in the South, as was expected.

title: Guinn v. United States


text:
Buchanan v. Warley

Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States addressed civil government-instituted racial segregation in residential areas. The Court held unanimously that a Louisville, Kentucky, city ordinance prohibiting the sale of real property to blacks in white-majority neighborhoods or buildings and vice versa violated the Fourteenth Amendment's protections for freedom of contract. The ruling of the Kentucky Court of Appeals was thus reversed.

Previous state court rulings had overturned racial zoning ordinances on grounds of the "takings clause" because of their failures to grandfather land that had been owned before enactment. The Court, in Buchanan, ruled that the motive for the Louisville ordinance—separation of races for purported reasons—was an inappropriate exercise of police power, and its insufficient purpose also made it unconstitutional.

Background
The city of Louisville had an ordinance that forbade any black person to own or occupy any buildings in an area in which a greater number of white persons resided, and vice versa. In 1915, William Warley, the prospective black buyer and an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), made an offer to Charles H. Buchanan for his property in a predominantly white neighborhood.

He based his offer on the following condition: "It is understood that I am purchasing the above property for the purpose of having erected thereon a house which I propose to make my residence, and it is a distinct part of this agreement that I shall not be required to accept a deed to the above property or to pay for said property unless I have the right under the laws of the State of Kentucky and the City of Louisville to occupy said property as a residence."

Buchanan, a white man, accepted the offer. When Warley did not complete the transaction, Buchanan brought an action in the Chancery Court of Louisville to force him to complete the purchase. Warley argued that Louisville's ordinance prevented him from occupying the property, so it was of less value to him. Buchanan sued on the grounds that the ordinance was unconstitutional, and he should receive full payment.

Decision
The Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Buchanan: "The effect of the ordinance under consideration was not merely to regulate a business or the like, but was to destroy the right of the individual to acquire, enjoy, and dispose of his property. Being of this character, it was void as being opposed to the due process clause of the constitution." Reversing the Appeals Court decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the ordinance surpassed the legitimate grounds of police power, as it interfered with individuals' rights of property. In addition, the court noted that the ordinance neither regulated the race of servants who might be employed in certain areas nor counted them as members of the household. The ruling did not address the right of owners or developers to restrict housing based on private agreements, meaning private housing restrictions against race were legally enforceable.

Justice Holmes wrote a draft opinion which suggested the case was "manufactured" by the seller and buyer. He withdrew the dissent and voted with the majority.

title: Buchanan v. Warley


text:
Pat Buchanan

Patrick Joseph Buchanan (born November 2, 1938) is an American paleoconservative author, political commentator, and politician. Buchanan was an assistant and special consultant to U.S. presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. He is an influential figure in the modern paleoconservative movement in America.

In 1992 and 1996, he sought the Republican presidential nomination. In 1992 he ran against incumbent president George H. W. Bush, campaigning against Bush's breaking of his "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge, as well as his foreign policy and positions on social issues. At the 1992 Republican National Convention, Buchanan delivered his "culture war" speech in support of the nominated President Bush. In 1996, he ran against eventual Republican nominee Bob Dole, but withdrew after getting only 21 percent of Republican primary votes. In 2000, he was the Reform Party's presidential nominee. His campaign centered on non-interventionism in foreign affairs, opposition to illegal immigration, and opposition to the outsourcing of manufacturing from free trade. He selected educator and conservative activist Ezola Foster as his running-mate.

In 2002, he co-founded The American Conservative magazine and launched a foundation named The American Cause. He has been published in The Occidental Observer, Human Events, National Review, The Nation, and Rolling Stone. The original host on CNN's Crossfire, he was a political commentator on the MSNBC cable network, including the show Morning Joe until February 2012, later appearing on Fox News. Buchanan was also a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group. Many of his views, particularly his opposition to American imperialism and the managerial state, echo those of the Old Right Republicans of the first half of the 20th century. Since 2006, Buchanan has been a frequent contributor to VDARE.

Early life
Buchanan was born in Washington, D.C., a son of William Baldwin Buchanan (August 13, 1905, in Virginia – January 19, 1988 in Washington, D.C.), a partner in an accounting firm, and his wife Catherine Elizabeth (Crum) Buchanan (December 23, 1911, in Charleroi, Washington County, Pennsylvania – September 18, 1995, in Oakton, Fairfax County, Virginia), a nurse and a homemaker. Buchanan had six brothers (Brian, Henry, James, John, Thomas, and William Jr.) and two sisters (Kathleen Theresa and Angela Marie, nicknamed Bay). Bay served as U.S. Treasurer under Ronald Reagan. His father was of Irish, English, and Scottish ancestry, and his mother was of German descent. He had a great-grandfather who fought in the American Civil War in the Confederate States Army, which is why he is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He admires Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur, and Joseph McCarthy.

Of his Southern ancestry, Buchanan has written:

"I have family roots in the South, in Mississippi. When the Civil War came, Cyrus Baldwin enlisted and did not survive Vicksburg. William Buchanan of Okolona, who would marry Baldwin's daughter, fought at Atlanta and was captured by General Sherman. William Baldwin Buchanan was the name given to my father and by him to my late brother.

As a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, I have been to their gatherings. I spoke at the 2001 SCV convention in Lafayette, LA. The Military Order of the Stars and Bars presented me with a battle flag and a wooden canteen like the ones my ancestors carried."

Buchanan was born into a Catholic family and attended Catholic schools, including the Jesuit-run Gonzaga College High School. As a student at a Catholic college—Georgetown University—he was in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) but did not complete the program. He earned his bachelor's degree in English from Georgetown, and received his draft notice after he graduated in 1960. The District of Columbia draft board exempted Buchanan from military service because of reactive arthritis, classifying him as 4-F. He received a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1962, writing his thesis on the expanding trade between Canada and Cuba.

St. Louis Globe-Democrat editorial writer
Buchanan joined the St. Louis Globe-Democrat at age 23. During the first year of the United States embargo against Cuba in 1961, Canada–Cuba trade tripled. The Globe-Democrat published a rewrite of Buchanan's Columbia master's project under the eight-column banner "Canada sells to Red Cuba — And Prospers" eight weeks after Buchanan started at the paper. According to Buchanan's memoir Right from the Beginning, this article was a career milestone. Buchanan later said the embargo strengthened the communist regime and he turned against it. Buchanan was promoted to assistant editorial page editor in 1964 and supported Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. The Globe-Democrat did not endorse Goldwater, and Buchanan speculated there was a clandestine agreement between the paper and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Buchanan recalled: "The conservative movement has always advanced from its defeats ... I can't think of a single conservative who was sorry about the Goldwater campaign." According to the foreword (written by Pat Buchanan) in some editions of Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative, Buchanan was a member of the Young Americans for Freedom and wrote press releases for that organization. He served as an executive assistant in the Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander, and Mitchell law offices in New York City in 1965.

Work for the Nixon White House
The next year, he was the first adviser hired by Nixon's presidential campaign; he worked primarily as an opposition researcher. The highly partisan speeches Buchanan wrote were consciously aimed at Richard Nixon's dedicated supporters, for which his colleagues soon nicknamed him Mr. Inside. Buchanan traveled with Nixon throughout the campaigns of 1966 and 1968. He made a tour of Western Europe, Africa and, in the immediate aftermath of the Six-Day War, the Middle East.

During the course of Nixon's presidency, Buchanan became entrusted on press relations, policy positions, and political strategy. Early on during Nixon's presidency, Buchanan worked as a White House assistant and speechwriter for Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. Buchanan coined the phrase "Silent Majority," and helped shape the strategy that drew millions of Democrats to Nixon. In a 1972 memo, he suggested the White House "should move to re-capture the anti-Establishment tradition or theme in American politics." His daily assignments included developing political strategy, publishing the President's Daily News Summary, and preparing briefing books for news conferences. He accompanied Nixon on his trip to China in 1972 and the summit in Moscow, Yalta and Minsk in 1974. He suggested that Nixon label Democratic opponent George McGovern an extremist and burn the White House tapes. Buchanan later argued that Nixon would have survived the Watergate scandal with his reputation intact if he had burnt the tapes.

Buchanan remained as a special assistant to Nixon through the final days of the Watergate scandal. He was not accused of wrongdoing, though some mistakenly suspected him of being Deep Throat. In 2005 when the actual identity of the press leak was revealed as Federal Bureau of Investigation Associate Director Mark Felt, Buchanan called him "sneaky," "dishonest" and "criminal." Because of his role in the Nixon campaign's "attack group," Buchanan appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee on September 26, 1973. He told the panel: "The mandate that the American people gave to this president and his administration cannot, and will not, be frustrated or repealed or overthrown as a consequence of the incumbent tragedy".

When Nixon resigned in 1974, Buchanan briefly stayed on as special assistant under incoming President Gerald Ford. Chief of Staff Alexander Haig offered Buchanan his choice of three open ambassador posts, including South Africa, for which Buchanan opted. President Ford initially signed off on the appointment, but then rescinded it after it was prematurely reported in the Evans-Novak Political Report and caused controversy, especially among the U.S. diplomatic corps.

Buchanan remarked about Watergate: "The lost opportunity to move against the political forces frustrating the expressed national will ... To effect a political counterrevolution in the capital— ... there is no substitute for a principled and dedicated man of the Right in the Oval Office".

Long after his resignation, Nixon called Buchanan a confidant and said he was neither a racist nor an antisemite nor a bigot or "hater," but a "decent, patriotic American." Nixon said Buchanan had "some strong views," such as his "isolationist" foreign policy, with which he disagreed. While Nixon did not think Buchanan should become president, he said the commentator "should be heard." However, according to a memo President Nixon sent to John Ehrlichman in 1970, Nixon characterized Buchanan's attitude towards integration as "segregation forever." Following Nixon's re-election in 1972, Buchanan himself had written in a memo to Nixon suggesting he should not "fritter away his present high support in the nation for an ill-advised governmental effort to forcibly integrate races."

News commentator
Buchanan returned to his column and began regular appearances as a broadcast host and political commentator. He co-hosted a three-hour daily radio show with liberal columnist Tom Braden called the Buchanan-Braden Program. He delivered daily commentaries on NBC radio from 1978 to 1984. Buchanan started his TV career as a regular on The McLaughlin Group and CNN's Crossfire (inspired by Buchanan-Braden) and The Capital Gang, making him nationally recognizable. His several stints on Crossfire occurred between 1982 and 1999; his sparring partners included Braden, Michael Kinsley, Geraldine Ferraro, and Bill Press.

Buchanan was a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group. He appeared most Sundays alongside John McLaughlin and the more liberal Newsweek journalist Eleanor Clift. His columns are syndicated nationally by Creators Syndicate.

Work for the Reagan White House
Buchanan served as White House Communications Director from February 1985 to March 1987. In a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters in 1986, Buchanan said of the Reagan administration: "Whether President Reagan has charted a new course that will set our compass for decades—or whether history will see him as the conservative interruption in a process of inexorable national decline—is yet to be determined".

A year later, he remarked that "the greatest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan." While her brother was working for Reagan, Bay Buchanan started a "Buchanan for President" movement in June 1986. She said the conservative movement needed a leader, but Buchanan was initially ambivalent. After leaving the White House, he returned to his column and Crossfire. Out of respect for Jack Kemp he sat out the 1988 race, although Kemp later became his adversary.

1992 presidential primaries

Buchanan was highly critical of the foreign and economic policies of the George H.W. Bush administration, particularly Bush's breaking of his 1988 "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge. In 1990, Buchanan published a newsletter called Patrick J. Buchanan: From the Right; it sent subscribers a bumper sticker reading: "Read Our Lips! No new taxes." In the 1992 Republican Party presidential primaries, Buchanan challenged Bush in his bid for re-nomination by the Republican Party, launching his campaign in December 1991. Buchanan failed to win any primaries, but finished a strong second in the New Hampshire primary and was regarded as forcing Bush to walk back his economic policies. The Buchanan campaign ran a number of radio and TV spots criticizing Bush's policies; in one, Buchanan accused Bush of being a "trade wimp", while another attacked him for presiding over the National Endowment of the Arts, which he said "invested our tax dollars in pornographic and blasphemous art too shocking to show."

In 1992, Buchanan explained his reasons for challenging the incumbent, President George H. W. Bush:

"If the country wants to go in a liberal direction, if the country wants to go in the direction of [Democrats] George Mitchell and Tom Foley, it doesn't bother me as long as I've made the best case I can. What I can't stand are the back-room deals. They're all in on it, the insider game, the establishment game—this is what we're running against."

He ran on a platform of immigration reduction and social conservatism, including opposition to multiculturalism, abortion, and gay rights. Buchanan challenged Bush (whose popularity was waning) when he won 38% of the New Hampshire primary. In the primary elections, Buchanan garnered three million total votes or 23% of the vote.

Buchanan later threw his support behind Bush and delivered an address at the 1992 Republican National Convention, which became known as the culture war speech, in which he described "a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America." In the speech, he said of Bill and Hillary Clinton:

"The agenda Clinton & Clinton would impose on America—abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units—that's change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America needs. It is not the kind of change America wants. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation we still call God's country."

Buchanan also said, in reference to the then recently held 1992 Democratic National Convention, "Like many of you last month, I watched that giant masquerade ball at Madison Square Garden—where 20,000 radicals and liberals came dressed up as moderates and centrists—in the greatest single exhibition of cross-dressing in American political history."

The contents of Buchanan's speech prompted his detractors to claim that the speech alienated moderate voters from the Bush-Quayle ticket. The newspaper columnist Molly Ivins wrote: "Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German."

Off the campaign trail
Buchanan returned to his column and Crossfire. To promote the principles of federalism, traditional values, and anti-intervention, he founded The American Cause, a conservative educational foundation, in 1993. Bay Buchanan serves as the Vienna, VA-based foundation's president and Pat is its chairman.

Buchanan returned to radio as host of Buchanan and Company, a three-hour talk show for Mutual Broadcasting System on July 5, 1993. It pitted him against liberal co-hosts, including Barry Lynn, Bob Beckel, and Chris Matthews, in a time slot opposite Rush Limbaugh's show. To launch his 1996 campaign, Buchanan left the program on March 20, 1995.

1996 presidential primaries
Buchanan made another attempt to win the Republican nomination in the 1996 primaries. Democratic President Bill Clinton was seeking reelection, but Clinton's predecessor President George H.W. Bush made clear he was uninterested in regaining the office. The party's front-runner was Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the Senate Majority Leader, who was considered to have many weaknesses.

Buchanan contested the Republican nomination from Dole's right, voicing his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Other candidates for the nomination included Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander and multi-millionaire publisher Steve Forbes.

In February, the liberal Center for Public Integrity issued a report claiming Buchanan's presidential campaign co-chairman, Larry Pratt, appeared at two meetings organized by white supremacist and militia leaders. Pratt denied any tie to racism, calling the report an orchestrated smear before the New Hampshire primary. Buchanan told the conservative Manchester Union Leader he believed Pratt. Pratt took a leave of absence "to answer these charges," "so as not to have distraction in the campaign."

Buchanan defeated Dole by about 3,000 votes, bettering his 1992 second-place finish in the February New Hampshire primary. He was endorsed by conservative Phyllis Schlafly, among others. He won three other states (Alaska, Missouri, and Louisiana), and finished only slightly behind Dole in the Iowa caucus. His insurgent campaign used his soaring rhetoric to mobilize grass-roots right wing opinion against what he saw as the bland Washington establishment (personified by Dole) which he believed had controlled the party for years. At a rally later in Nashua, he said: "We shocked them in Alaska. Stunned them in Louisiana. Stunned them in Iowa. They are in a terminal panic. They hear the shouts of the peasants from over the hill. All the knights and barons will be riding into the castle pulling up the drawbridge in a minute. All the peasants are coming with pitchforks. We're going to take this over the top."

In the Super Tuesday primaries Dole defeated Buchanan by large margins. Having collected only 21%, or 3.1 million, of the total votes in Republican primaries, Buchanan suspended his campaign in March. He declared that, if Dole were to choose a pro-choice running mate, he would run as the US Taxpayers Party (now Constitution Party) candidate. Dole chose Jack Kemp, and he received Buchanan's endorsement. After the 1996 campaign, Buchanan returned to his column and Crossfire. He also began a series of books with 1998's The Great Betrayal.

2000 presidential campaign
Buchanan announced his departure from the Republican Party in October 1999, disparaging them (along with the Democrats) as a "beltway party." He sought the nomination of the Reform Party. Many reformers backed Iowa physicist John Hagelin, whose platform was based on Transcendental Meditation. Party founder Ross Perot did not endorse either candidate for the Reform Party's nomination. (In late October 2000, Perot publicly endorsed George W. Bush, but Perot's 1996 running-mate, Pat Choate, would go on to endorse Buchanan.)

Supporters of Hagelin charged the results of the party's open primary, which favored Buchanan by a wide margin, were "tainted." The Reform Party divisions led to dual conventions being held simultaneously in separate areas of the Long Beach Convention Center complex. Both conventions' delegates ignored the primary ballots and voted to nominate their presidential candidates from the floor, similar to the Democratic and Republican conventions. One convention nominated Buchanan while the other backed Hagelin, with each camp claiming to be the legitimate Reform Party.

Ultimately, when the Federal Elections Commission ruled Buchanan was to receive ballot status as the Reform candidate, as well as about $12.6 million in federal campaign funds secured by Perot's showing in the 1996 election, Buchanan won the nomination. In his acceptance speech, Buchanan proposed US withdrawal from the United Nations and expelling the United Nations Headquarters from New York, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, taxes on inheritance and capital gains, and affirmative action programs.

As his running mate, Buchanan chose African American activist and retired teacher from Los Angeles, Ezola B. Foster. Buchanan was supported in this election run by future Socialist Party USA presidential candidate Brian Moore, who said in 2008 he supported Buchanan in 2000 because "he was for fair trade over free trade. He had some progressive positions that I thought would be helpful to the common man." On August 19, the New York Right to Life Party, in convention, chose Buchanan as their nominee, with 90% of the districts voting for him.

In a campaign speech at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, Buchanan attempted to rally his conservative base:

"God and the Ten Commandments have all been expelled from the public schools. Christmas carols are out. Christmas holidays are out. The latest decision of the United States Supreme Court said that children in stadiums or young people in high school games are not to speak an inspirational moment for fear they may mention God's name, and offend an atheist in the grandstand ...

We may not succeed, but I believe we need a new fighting conservative traditionalist party in America. I believe, and I hope that one day we can take America back. That is why we are building this Gideon's army and heading for Armageddon, to do battle for the Lord."

In the 2000 presidential election, Buchanan finished fourth with 449,895 votes, 0.4% of the popular vote. (Hagelin garnered 0.1% as the Natural Law Party candidate.) In Palm Beach County, Florida, Buchanan received 3,407 votes—which some saw as inconsistent with Palm Beach County's liberal leanings, its large Jewish population and his showing in the rest of the state. As a result of the county's now-infamous "butterfly ballot", he is suspected to have gained close to 3000 inadvertent votes. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer stated, "Palm Beach county is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3,407 votes there." Reform Party officials strongly disagreed, estimating the number of supporters in the county at between 400 and 500. Appearing on The Today Show, Buchanan said: "When I took one look at that ballot on Election Night ... it's very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for Al Gore".

Some observers said his campaign was aimed to spread his message beyond his white conservative and populist base, while his views had not changed.

Later presidential elections
Following the 2000 election, Reform Party members urged Buchanan to take an active role within the party. Buchanan declined, though he did attend their 2001 convention. In the next few years, he identified himself as a political independent, choosing not to align himself with what he viewed as the neo-conservative Republican party leadership. Prior to the 2004 election, Buchanan announced he once again identified himself as a Republican, declared that he had no interest in ever running for president again, and reluctantly endorsed Bush's 2004 reelection, writing: "Bush is right on taxes, judges, sovereignty, and values. Kerry is right on nothing".

Buchanan also endorsed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, stating in an article that "Obama offers more of the stalemate America has gone through for the past two years" while "Romney alone offers a possibility of hope and change."

Buchanan supported the nomination of Donald Trump, who ran on many of the same positions that Buchanan ran on twenty years prior, as Republican presidential candidate for the 2016 presidential election.

MSNBC commentator
Although CNN decided not to take him back, Buchanan's column resumed. A longer variation of the Crossfire format was aired by MSNBC as Buchanan and Press on July 15, 2002, reuniting Buchanan and Press. Billed as "the smartest hour on television", Buchanan and Press featured the duo interviewing guests and sparring about the top news stories. As the Iraq War loomed, Buchanan and Press toned down their rivalry, as they both opposed the invasion. Press claims they were the first cable hosts to discuss the planned attack. MSNBC Editor-in-Chief Jerry Nachman once jokingly lamented this unusual situation:

"So the point is why does only Fox [News Channel] get this? At least, we work at the perfect place, the place that's fiercely independent. We try to have balance by putting you two guys together and then this Stockholm syndrome love fest set in between the two of you, and we no longer even have robust debate."

Just hours after his talk show debuted, Buchanan was a guest on the premiere of MSNBC's short-lived Donahue program. Host Phil Donahue and Buchanan debated the separation of church and state. Buchanan called Donahue "dictatorial" and said that the host got his job through affirmative action.

MSNBC President Eric Sorenson canceled Buchanan and Press on November 26, 2003. Buchanan stayed at MSNBC as a political analyst. He regularly appeared on the network's talk shows. He occasionally filled in on the nightly show Scarborough Country during its run on MSNBC. Buchanan also was a frequent guest and co-host of Morning Joe as well as Hardball and The Rachel Maddow Show.

In September 2009, Buchanan wrote an MSNBC opinion column arguing that Adolf Hitler did not want war and the Allied force's actions were unnecessary. The article was removed from the website after MSNBC was urged to do so in a public statement by the National Jewish Democratic Council. Buchanan had used the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland to argue that the United Kingdom should not have declared war on Nazi Germany. This revived charges of antisemitism and helping to legitimize Holocaust denial.

In October 2011, Buchanan was indefinitely suspended from MSNBC as a contributor after the publication of his book Suicide of a Superpower. One of the book's chapters is titled, "The End of White America." The minority advocacy group Color of Change had urged MSNBC to fire him over alleged racist slurs. It was announced on February 16, 2012, that MSNBC's connection with Buchanan had ended.

The American Conservative magazine
In 2002, Buchanan partnered with former New York Post editorial page editor Scott McConnell and journalist Taki Theodoracopulos to found The American Conservative, a new magazine intended to promote traditional conservative viewpoints on economic, immigration and foreign policies. The first issue was dated October 7, 2002.

VDARE
Since 2006, Buchanan has been a frequent contributor to VDARE, a far right website and blog founded by anti-immigration activist and paleo-conservative Peter Brimelow. VDARE is considered a white nationalist news source by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Antisemitism allegations
In December 1991, a 40,000-word article by William F. Buckley Jr. was published in the National Review discussing antisemitism among conservative commentators focused largely on Buchanan; the article and many responses to it were collected in the book In Search of Anti-Semitism (1992). He wrote: "I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism", but concluded: "If you ask, do I think Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite, my answer is he is not one. But I think he's said some anti-Semitic things".

The Anti-Defamation League has described Buchanan as an "unrepentant bigot" who "repeatedly demonizes Jews and minorities and openly affiliates with white supremacists." In an article for The Washington Post in March 1992, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer suggested: "The real problem with Buchanan ... is not that his instincts are antisemitic but that they are, in various and distinct ways, fascistic." "There's no doubt," said Krauthammer in 1999 when contacted for a Salon article, "he makes subliminal appeals to prejudice." He added: "The interesting thing is how he can say these things and still be considered a national figure." Buchanan denies assertions that he is an antisemite, and some of his fellow journalists, including Murray Rothbard, Jack Germond, Al Hunt and Mark Shields, have defended him against the charge.

Nazi war criminals
Around 1982, Buchanan began to defend Cleveland auto-worker John Demjanjuk against the charge that Demjanjuk was a Nazi war criminal nicknamed "Ivan the Terrible" responsible for the mass murder of Jews at Treblinka. In 1986, while he was a senior figure in the Reagan administration, he was highly critical of the charges brought by Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the Nazi war crimes unit of the Justice Department. He claimed Demjanjuk was the victim of mistaken identity and possibly the victim of a deliberate frame-up by the Soviet Union.

The following year, while still a member of the administration, he made unofficial attempts to stop the deportation of suspected Nazi war criminals from the Eastern Bloc, including Estonian Karl Linnas as well as Demjanjuk. Menachem Z. Rosensaft, in a New York Times op-ed, described Buchanan's "oft-expressed sympathy for a host of Nazi criminals" like Linnas as being "a constitutionally protected perversion." Buchanan referred to such cases as being pursued by "revenge-obsessed Nazi hunters" in 1987. As a member of the Reagan White House, he was accused of having suppressed the Reagan Justice Department's investigation into Nazi scientists brought to America by the OSS's Operation Paperclip.

In 1990, Allan Ryan Jr., a former head of the OSI said Buchanan's accusation of KGB involvement in the Demjanjuk case was "an absolutely cockamamie theory." Ryan accused Buchanan of being "the spokesman for Nazi war criminals in America." Neal Sher, OSI head in 1990 said Buchanan had never contacted them, even when he was a government official. "He essentially took what was fed him by our opponents, sometimes Holocaust-deniers, and just regurgitated it," Sher told The Washington Post. In 1993, however, the Supreme Court of Israel overturned Demjanjuk's war crimes conviction and sentence of death by hanging as a miscarriage of justice based on mistaken identity. Demjanjuk then returned to the United States to fight the revocation of his American citizenship.

Following an elderly Demjanjuk's re-arrest and extradition to the Federal Republic of Germany in 2009, Menachem Z. Rosensaft in The Times of Israel and Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, objected to an outraged Buchanan again accusing the case of being a frame-up and comparing Demjanjuk to Jesus Christ and calling him an "American Dreyfuss. [sic]" This was alleged by Goldberg as an example of the libel that the Jews as a whole killed Christ. Describing Buchanan's comparison as "strikingly offensive" and an attempt to "revive the charge of blood libel" against Jews, Peter Wehner wrote in Commentary magazine: "Rarely do you find such an obscene mix of blasphemy and bigotry, and all in less than 900 words." Demjanjuk was later convicted of being an accessory to murder of 28,000 Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor extermination camp. Demjanjuk died in 2012, while the verdict had been overturned and was pending appeal.

Bitburg visit by President Reagan
Buchanan supported President Reagan's plan to visit a German military cemetery at Bitburg in 1985, where among buried Wehrmacht soldiers were the graves of 48 Waffen SS members. At the insistence of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and over the vocal objections of Jewish groups, the trip went ahead. In a 1992 interview, Elie Wiesel described attending a White House meeting of Jewish leaders about the trip: "The only one really defending the trip was Pat Buchanan, saying, 'We cannot give the perception of the President being subjected to Jewish pressure.'" Buchanan accused Wiesel of fabricating the story in an ABC interview in 1992: "I didn't say it and Elie Wiesel wasn't even in the meeting ... That meeting was held three weeks before the Bitburg summit was held. If I had said that, it would have been out of there within hours and on the news."

Comments on the Holocaust
In a 1990 column for the New York Post, Buchanan wrote that it was impossible for 850,000 Jews to be killed by diesel exhaust fed into the gas chamber at Treblinka in a return to his interest in the Demjanjuk case. "Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody," he wrote. The Washington Post cited experts to the effect that there is more than sufficient carbon monoxide present in the fumes to speedily asphyxiate victims, causing their death. Buchanan once argued Treblinka "was not a death camp but a transit camp used as a 'pass-through point' for prisoners". In fact, historians have estimated that some 900,000 Jews were murdered at Treblinka. When George Will challenged him on the issue on TV in December 1991, Buchanan did not reply.

Comments about Israel
In the context of the Gulf War, on August 26, 1990, Buchanan appeared on The McLaughlin Group and said: "there are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East – the Israeli defense ministry and its 'amen corner' in the United States." Buchanan on The McLaughlin Group on June 15, 1990, asserted: "Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory". He also said in the August 1990 program: "The Israelis want this war desperately because they want the United States to destroy the Iraqi war machine. They want us to finish them off. They don't care about our relations with the Arab world." A. M. Rosenthal, in an article for The New York Times explicitly accused Buchanan of antisemitism on the grounds that he had used the word "Israelis" as a cover for Jews. Abraham Foxman, the director of the ADL, compared Buchanan's comments to insinuations made during the Second World War "that Jews were the only ones who sought American entry in the war against Nazi Germany".

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in September 1990 said Buchanan "leaves the memory of Jewish victims in such disdain; a man who always takes the side of those accused of being killers; a man who is constantly criticizing Israel; a man who always has something nasty to say about the Jewish people".

Central Park jogger case
In a 1989 column, Buchanan called for the public hanging in Central Park of a 16-year-old black teenager and the horsewhipping of four other younger African American and Hispanic teenagers for allegedly raping a white jogger in the Central Park Five case. He also called for the civilizing of "barbarians" by putting the "fear of death" in them. Robert C. Smith, professor of political science at San Francisco State University, characterized the column as racist. The five teenagers were convicted, but their charges were later withdrawn, when in 2002 a man said he acted alone and DNA testing affirmed his guilt.

Personal life
Buchanan married White House staffer Shelley Ann Scarney in 1971. They had a tabby cat named Gipper, who reportedly would sit on Buchanan's lap during staff meetings. Buchanan identifies as a traditionalist Catholic who attends Mass in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite,\ and strongly defended Summorum Pontificum.

Books

 * Buchanan, Patrick J. (2006). State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books,  ISBN 0-312-36003-7. Full text available.
 * Buchanan, Patrick J. (2006). State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books,  ISBN 0-312-36003-7. Full text available.
 * Buchanan, Patrick J. (2006). State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books,  ISBN 0-312-36003-7. Full text available.
 * Buchanan, Patrick J. (2006). State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books,  ISBN 0-312-36003-7. Full text available.
 * Buchanan, Patrick J. (2006). State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books,  ISBN 0-312-36003-7. Full text available.
 * Buchanan, Patrick J. (2006). State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books,  ISBN 0-312-36003-7. Full text available.
 * Buchanan, Patrick J. (2006). State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books,  ISBN 0-312-36003-7. Full text available.
 * Buchanan, Patrick J. (2006). State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books,  ISBN 0-312-36003-7. Full text available.

Major speeches

 * 1992 Republican National Convention keynote, August 17, 1992
 * The Cultural War for the Soul of America, September 14, 1992
 * 1996 campaign announcement, March 20, 1995
 * 1996 campaign speech, Georgia primary stump speech February 29, 1996
 * Free Trade, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations speech November 18, 1998
 * 2000 campaign announcement, March 2, 1999
 * A Time for Truth about China, Commonwealth Club speech April 5, 1999
 * To Reunite a Nation, Richard Nixon Library speech on immigration January 18, 2000
 * 2000 Reform Party nomination acceptance, August 12, 2000
 * Death of The West, Commonwealth Club speech January 14, 2002

Interviews

 * Slen, Peter. In Depth with Pat Buchanan. C-SPAN, May 2, 2010.
 * Slen, Peter. In Depth with Pat Buchanan. C-SPAN, May 2, 2010.
 * Slen, Peter. In Depth with Pat Buchanan. C-SPAN, May 2, 2010.
 * Slen, Peter. In Depth with Pat Buchanan. C-SPAN, May 2, 2010.
 * Slen, Peter. In Depth with Pat Buchanan. C-SPAN, May 2, 2010.
 * Slen, Peter. In Depth with Pat Buchanan. C-SPAN, May 2, 2010.

In popular culture

 * A fictional version of Buchanan appears in the 2009 film Watchmen, portrayed by James M. Connor.
 * Buchanan appears as the final boss of the 1992 video game GayBlade.
 * Buchanan was played by Phil Hartman in the Saturday Night Live parodies of The McLaughlin Group.

Archives

 * Patrick J. Buchanan Papers (White House Special Files) (1969-1972)
 * Works by Patrick J. Buchanan at Internet Archive
 * Works by Patrick J. Buchanan at LewRockwell.com
 * Works by Patrick J. Buchanan at TheAmericanCause.org
 * Works by Patrick J. Buchanan at TheAmericanCause.org

title: Pat Buchanan