|  Fear,
fees lessen
number of births
papers publish
By Erin
Klopfenstein
Bulletin Staff
“When did
we cross the line from being protective of our children to paranoid
of everyone and everything around us?” Mike Kirby, editor of The
Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass., said in a December 2008 Weblog titled,
“Oh baby, are we paranoid.”
Sturdy Memorial
Hospital of Attleboro, had decided then that it would no longer announce
births to the local news media, effective Jan. 1, 2009.
The hospital’s
decision was made in response to a 2009 document released by the National
Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va., that
urged hospitals to discontinue releasing birth information to prevent
infant abduction.
“I’ve
been in this business for about 30 years, and I’ve never heard
about an abduction because of a name in the newspaper for a birth announcement
or anything else,” Kirby said in a more recent telephone interview
with the Bulletin. MORE> |
