To: The Dallas Morning News
Date: July 29, 1999
Subject: 11-year-old babysitter killed her nephew
Result: Not printed due to limited space

Dear Editor,

A recent story in the news has been of the 11-year-old girl who was baby-sitting for her 23-year-old sister's 5 children, all of whom were under the age of 5, and the 11-year-old ended up killing the youngest child when she became frustrated with it.

Something that is hard for me to fathom is why nobody with your newspaper or in a Letter to the Editor has said anything about what to me is a very obvious point about this sad story.

Speaking of the 23-year-old mother of all those kids, I am sure that for each one of her pregnancies she must have conferred with a doctor at least once. I just don't understand why, after 3 babies at the most, one of those doctors did not say, "Hey girl, let's get those tubes tied," and take the appropriate action. Were they all so totally removed from personal involvement in the woman's case that they could not realize that here is a person who has a total lack of stability in her life financially and otherwise, and that she absolutely should not be having babies. She was on drugs during one or probably all of her pregnancies, citing the frustration of her whole life and situation, trying to take care of babies and having all those responsibilities.

I myself have an acquaintance who is totally unstable in her life and finances, with no inclination whatever to change that, who has 2 children by a drug addict who does things like go hock the baby buggy to pay for a cocaine fix. The second child was born 3 months before the girl's 21st birthday, and even though she asked the doctor to tie her tubes at that point, the response was, "Oh no, we can't do that. You're under 21. You still might want to have more babies."

Good Lord! When and if she ever becomes stable in her life and is ready and able to support more babies, then she can reverse the procedure. Or, in the event that the reversal doesn't work, and she still wants and is able to support more children, then the worst-case scenario is there are plenty of babies in the world to adopt, who will be just as lovable as a biological child.

Meanwhile, back to the 23-year-old mother and her 11-year-old "killer" sister, the mother (the sister) went off that night to go spend the night with her new boyfriend. No doubt about 9 months from then the young girl would have had 6 little children to babysit for (if not for the unhappy incident) - until about 9 months after that.

Why can't we initiate a little common sense when it comes to the relationship between doctors and the young and unstable mothers whose babies they deliver, and let those doctors become the advisors and helpers that they ought to be?

Instead, the doctors are just like everybody else these days, whose attitude is what is the absolute least I can do to get this job out of the way and say I did it and get my money. That's the minimalist society we live in.

Thank you, John Vehon