How did a story about a kidnapping evolve into a raging debate about state-sponsored sterilization in the Philadelphia media?
It started when two-month-old Shaniyah Grantby disappeared last Saturday. Her mother, Tiesha Pitts, 26, had let another woman take Shaniyah to the store, and that woman - later identified as Clarissa Hanton, 23 - never brought her back.
When Shaniyah was found Monday, it seemed like a happy ending. Until it came out that Tiesha entrusted her child to someone whose full name and address she didn't even know. And that she waited more than 24 hours to report the baby missing.
So the Department of Human Services placed Shaniyah in foster care temporarily while they investigate the family. But maybe DHS already knows enough: Shaniyah is Tiesha's seventh kid, and it turns out the other six are all in foster care.
Tiesha's mother, Ernestine Pitts-Rainey, said that Tiesha has "the mind of a 12-year-old," and suffers from emotional and developmental disorders.
This revelation enraged many Philadelphians who had been rooting for Shaniyah's safe return - an anger reflected in comments on local websites covering the story: "Why was this woman not stopped from procreating by her own parents . . . Norplant was a wonderful thing," wrote one reader.
A fair question. Shouldn't Tiesha's mother have put her on some kind of long-term birth control before she was 18, knowing what she knew about Tiesha's disabilities?
Another reader stated, "The state of PA does have the right to make this young woman be sterilized because she is mentally challenged." And although the thought of forced sterilization makes me queasy, I have to admit I can't think of a better solution in a case like this. Tiesha is only 26. If she continues to pop out babies at the current rate, she could easily have ten more children - kids whose safety might be comprised while under her care, and, should they be placed in foster homes, would face a terribly uncertain, difficult road. Never mind the strain on already stretched public resources.
Philadelphia Daily News photo
