Right to Life?

Religious right activists are working overtime in 2006 to elect candidates that will write discrimination into the US Constitution. They are concerned that if loving lesbian and gay couples are allowed to marry that somehow "traditional values" will be in jeopardy. So I must ask, where were those "values" for little Sarah Chavez?

Florida will soon decide whether or not to allow lesbians and gays to adopt. Not that long ago another young girl, who fell through the cracks in Florida's system, was killed by her mother's boyfriend. She had been in the care of a loving gay couple, but tragically they were deemed unsuitable parents in the eyes of the state.

Over the past three decades I have heard far too many stories similar to these. How many more children must die before our culture recognizes that it's not who you love, but what kind of person you are that should determine whether or not you are fit to raise a child?

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A Child's Death Reveals a System's Tragic Flaw

Crucial information from foster mothers was missed; it might have kept Sarah Chavez alive.

By Noam N. Levey
Times Staff Writer
February 13, 2006

Corri Planck and Dianne Hardy-Garcia were overjoyed when they got the call.

Driven by a hope they might someday adopt a needy child, the Los Angeles couple had spent months training to become foster parents. Now, county welfare officials were looking for a safe home for Sarah Chavez, a 2-year-old girl.

Like giddy new parents, Planck and Hardy-Garcia rushed to buy furniture, toys and a stroller for the toddler. "We felt like, wow, what an amazing gift," Hardy-Garcia said recently.

Over the next three months, the women took Sarah to the zoo and on long walks in the neighborhood, where the little girl waved at strangers. Sometimes they would stay up at night just watching Sarah sleep.

Then it all changed. On a Monday afternoon last April, the couple was told to pack up Sarah's clothes because a court referee had ordered the toddler returned to her aunt and uncle, even though social workers had once suspected them of abusing her.

By fall the little girl with pigtails, who liked snails and dancing to show tunes, was dead — beaten, prosecutors now allege, by the same aunt and uncle. Both have pleaded not guilty. (full story)