On Friday, The View’s hosts discussed “manger mom,” an 18-year-old mother who left her five-hour-old baby in a nativity scene inside of a Queens, New York church last month. Though some churchgoers want to adopt him, the mother might want her child back, a decision the The View gang weighed in on, unfortunately.
Last week, as has been reported by Newsday, the mother—who remains anonymous—told cops that she left the infant in the manger “because it was the warmest place in the church.” The child was found by a janitor, who called church officials immediately. New York’s Abandoned Infant Protection Act allows parents to leave a child 30 days or younger “with an appropriate person or in a suitable location where the parent promptly notifies an appropriate person of the child’s location.” Despite this, police said they won’t be pressing charges against the mother.
In an interview with the New York Post on Friday, the mother, who is a recent immigrant from Mexico, said she kept her pregnancy a secret and only gained 10 pounds so no one—including her aunt she lives with or the child’s father in Mexico—knew she was pregnant. She gave birth alone, too afraid to cut her son’s umbilical cord. Then she left him at Holy Child Jesus Church because she’d attended services there before and “the people there are good.” After laying him in the church’s nativity scene wrapped in a towel, she prayed that he was warm enough and felt sure a priest would find him, even checking back the next day. Now she hasn’t seen him since his release from a hospital, but she’s unsure whether she wants her son back. Her family still doesn’t know the abandoned child is hers.
On The View, it was clear that some people read their morning news notes and others, well, not so much. Joy Behar said she’s seen “Christmas movies” where mothers leave their infants in mangers. Candace Cameron Bure joined in, arguing that the young mother is a Mexican immigrant who was probably very afraid, alone and thought about the same movie when abandoning her child.