As Texas’ stringent abortion laws continue to hold sway, a growing number of babies are being abandoned in Texas. Experts say a lack of education is to blame for unlawful child surrender.
“A lot of times [mothers are] just scared,” said Tiffani Butler, a spokesperson for the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) that covers North Texas. “Their hormones, their emotions are everywhere. They’re in shock. They don’t really know what they just went through. A lot of times they just went through it by themselves.”
Reports of six illegally abandoned babies in just three months in Houston has brought the issue of unlawful child surrender back into the spotlight recently. Two of the babies were dead when discovered. In July, Houston police arrested Everilda Cux-Ajtzalam, a teen mom of one of the six babies. Cux-Ajtzalam, a Guatemalan citizen, gave birth to a baby boy in a parking lot, tied him in a bag and placed the bag in a nearby garbage bin. A passerby heard the infant crying and he was rescued and placed in foster care. Cux-Ajtzalam said she had been raped by a family member and did not know she was pregnant until the third trimester. She has since been charged with felony abandonment of a child…