this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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[–] WraithGear@lemmy.world 9 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

So i looked into it. Such deaths are not uncommon in the US. The issues that can cause maternal deaths can show up 24-48 hours after birth and the mother, having just gone through major traumatic body altering experience, may not trust her feelings that there is something wrong, and statistics show that neither do doctors. But in the US early release is the standard because maternity beds up time is money.

But i also learned of the Newborn and Mothers health protection act of 1996, that guarantee a stay of 48 hours vaginal or 96 hours c-section birth. And this must be covered by all medical insurance.

But x2. If the doctor agrees to an early dismissal, and the wife said anything but a full unquestionable rejection of the premise of early dismissal then they may be ejected. Which is a lot to ask of a new mother. At which point an advocate is the only way to reverse it. Husbands or family better be aware and on their shit i guess.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 2 points 36 minutes ago (1 children)

Note the story does not indicate the specific age of the baby or even that the cause of death is related to having given birth or something like post partum depression, which is also a potentially worrying cause over a longer term. It could have been an utterly accidental death or unrelated health condition.

You raise a valid set of concerns, but no indication whether it is pertinent to this story.

[–] WraithGear@lemmy.world 2 points 16 minutes ago (1 children)

Right, i don’t have that information, but when looking this up i came across a comment that said deaths soon after birth are not uncommon and that unnerved me so i went down a rabbit hole. Not saying that this is directly related… i just had to tell someone my findings

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 2 points 5 minutes ago

Seems reasonable enough, and a good reason to encourage particular focus after birth in your neighborhood support circle.

Which hopefully you've fostered in general, but I certainly can't claim to have done so well on that front myself..

[–] catty@lemmy.world 16 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (3 children)

We all have our own models of how the world works. This frames how we understand the meanings of content.

The phrase "baby left alone" in no way implies it's the mother's fault. It is correct, a baby was left alone, in as much the fault of the 'system'.

This meme feels more like something to instil anger and hatred than anything actually useful.

in fact it even says “after mother dies”

[–] sunflowercowboy@feddit.org 4 points 2 hours ago

Since when are memes useful? Theyre mainly propaganda tools but when theyre useless they're called memes.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

It's not even certain it's reasonably the fault of the 'system'. There's no details about how or why the mother died or why she happened to be alone with the baby for a few days. A mother taking care of a baby for a few days by herself is not a crazy circumstance without further context. At one point my wife had work and I had to take our toddler on a trip for a couple of days and no one could possibly have accused that situation of me being alone with our toddler due to some failure of the system, even if something had tragically killed me along the way.

There are so many stories about the system failing a baby or a mother, we don't need to extrapolate this specific incomplete story with such details until the actual details are available, which may or may not be consistent with the tragic failures of the system.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago

Ah... bait.

[–] Sillyglow@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 hours ago

Are they gonna charge her ghost?

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 21 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I thought you could say "I was left alone after my friend passed" or something. It doesn't mean my friend left me purposefully but rather I was just alone after he died

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 36 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

It's about the framing. The focus is on the baby being "left alone," with passive language implying that somebody did that to them. Meanwhile, the mother's death is treated as an afterthought, only relevant as a circumstance in the baby's story.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world -4 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

It doesn't imply that somebody did it to them. The baby was left alone by the circumnstances. It's kind of difficult to come up with as short a sentence that is reasonably possible to read without somehow using 'left alone' in it.

[–] null@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

"A baby was found alone days after its mother died."

It's truly not that difficult at all.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world -1 points 48 minutes ago (1 children)

Was the baby dead? In trying to edit out the word 'rescue' you've left a key detail ambiguous.

You refered to a human as "it", because you didn't want to say "baby" twice but the details didn't include a gender and that sentence structure didn't provide a good way to just refer to the baby once. This is commonly considered pretty dehumanizing choice of pronoun. I'd argue this is much more likely to offend people.

All this to avoid some imagined implied slight by the choice of the phrase "left alone" when there's no whiff that the subject of the verb would be the mother.

There was some eagerness to find offence at a really innocuous headline, but really it's quite a fairly straightforward headline that requires the reader to pretty much try to be offended by a particular reading of what most would consider an innocuous phrase.

[–] null@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 minutes ago

Oh even better: "Baby rescued days after mother died"

So easy.

[–] Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

"Kind of difficult"

I'm not a native English speaker and I can easily come up with many alternatives that don't imply the baby was left alone purposely.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world -1 points 2 hours ago

"left" is used all the time where no one was purposely doing anything. It doesn't imply that at all.

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz -1 points 6 hours ago

I think you can say that someone was "left alone" without any implication that it was done to them, just that it merely happened.

[–] frazw@lemmy.world 118 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

"Baby rescued from apartment after single-mother tragically died days earlier"

Didn't think it was that difficult

[–] Ptsf@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

It's not, but then the headline wouldn't subconsciously bias you towards rage clicking.

[–] jsomae@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I think that's a worse headline because it doesn't involve the sad imagery of a baby alone for 4 days. "Tragic" is a kitschy word to include in a headline. And neither your headline nor the one in the meme place the mother up-front.

[–] frazw@lemmy.world 7 points 2 hours ago

Well ... Full disclosure. I'm not a journalist

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

They don't know she was a single mother. They don't know who she was because they weren't told. The father could have been on a business trip for all we know. That proposed headline injects one plausible guess as to why the baby would have been alone, but without any actual data to back it up.

It also fails to indicate that the baby was alone. You try to imply it by 'single mother', but whose to say that there wasn't someone else in the house that might have been important, like a sibling or extended family member? The detail that the infant was alone was key, but omitted in your version. Of course it's awkward to try to indicate the baby was alone without using the word 'left' in the context of a headline appropriate short sentence.

They could have injected the word "tragically" before dies for a bit more consideration, though people can see that the tragedy is pretty self evident.

[–] adry@piefed.social 9 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Plus, "where was the father? huh??" I understand they could've separated, but he still had responsibilities towards this baby. So, only if the journalists had confirmed he was deceased long ago it would make sense to make this omission... but they should said so.

[–] NostraDavid@programming.dev 1 points 48 minutes ago

but he still had responsibilities towards this baby.

This is going to sound harsh: If the woman can choose to abort or not, no he doesn't. If women want the sole responsibility on whether a fetus lives, they can get it. Fully. In that case: His wallet, his choice. His time, his choice. etc, etc.

Now, if there is an abortion ban, then it's a different story, and the man should have the legal responsibility for both mom and child, by default.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago

Seems like the authorities didn't release a lot of actionable details to the press. They only see the baby and have a short description of the scene. Not where the scene was or the identity of anyone or a hint as to how the mother died. The journalists are simply reporting the partial story without anything further to go on at the moment. The press likely will be bored of the incident well before the details would be available.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 38 points 12 hours ago (7 children)

I... don't know, man, the info that she died is right there in the headline. I'm struggling to compose that sentence in English without using the word "left".

"Police rescue baby alone for days after mother dies" doesn't sound like English. "Police rescue baby alone after mother dies" sounds like the news is the baby doesn't have any other family and also sounds weird.

If you take motherhood out of it altogether it becomes more obvious, I suppose. "The man was left alone on a deserted island after the rest of the plane's crew died in the crash" is a perfectly valid way to frame that.

Blame English for using adjectives weird sometimes.

[–] Tamo240@programming.dev 10 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

'Police rescue baby found alone after mother dies days earlier'

[–] Klear@lemmy.world -1 points 2 hours ago

Not a native speaker, but it sounds off to me.

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[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 13 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I hope that when the mother died, that all of her hardships and burdens sloughed away, and that she knows that her loved ones are safe so that she can rest in peace.

Then, I hope that all of that negative shit condenses itself into the world's most pristine Lego that haunts whoever came up with that tone and headline. When those who are responsible wear shoes, I hope that ghost Lego becomes a puddle.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 0 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I'm with you in the first half, but people are reading way too much into the connotation of "left alone". Anyone who at least read the full headline would not see the mother being accused of anything. "left alone" is merely descriptive and does not demand nor suggest that someone's actions or even negligence caused it.

Trying to write an accurate, comprehensive, short headline is tricky if trying to dance around this level of presumptuous offense.

[–] Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I think it’s because left alone implies intention, and an explanation is only offered at the end of the headline. Whereas other phrasing can avoid that. Baby found alone after mother dies, for instance. Or even Baby found alone by police after mother dies.

Honestly, if I’m going to overthink it, I think it’s because of the cultural tropes of the U.S. and advertiser-driven media. Saying that the police rescue the baby sort of sets up the sentence for misinterpretation, but police rescuing the baby instead of merely finding it is more emotive - it drives engagement, it reinforces the notion that police are protectors.
And following, left alone vs found alone. Police rescue baby found alone […] is sort of narratively poor. There’s a disjoint that I’m sure someone smarter than me can describe, but Police rescue baby left alone […] is a better ‘fit’, even if it’s factually looser. It may have to do with cultural preconditioning where people expect police intervention only when the parent has taken an action.

Heck, Baby left alone after mother dies is saved by police, establishes the narrative without burying the lede, and it even keeps the left alone phrase intact while establishing context before moving to other narrative.

But anyway, my point, I guess, is that the title is editorialized for the wrong kind of drama, and that’s dumb. The situation has its own drama if they would appeal to empathy, rather than people’s desire to bootlick and see evil everywhere.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

I think people are overthinking a headline that the author likely gave very little thought about it. There was a dead mother, a baby that was alone as a result for days, and the footage we have is police bodycam footage, so the police involvement is another key salient detail, and beyond that, no information was disclosed so they didn't have it.

I'd say in terms of being "clickbaity", it's pretty low on the list. You pretty much have as much of the story as there is a story as of yet just by reading the headline. ACAB crowd may take umbridge at the police ever doing anything good, but at the end of the day any people can do a right thing, and this is the sort of thing that one can respect as police activity, though one would perhaps wish for a more neutral sort of party to conduct an initial welfare check over someone being conspicuously absent without signs of violence or threat. One might also hope that a neighbor would be better situated to actively check in, but if the house is locked and she wasn't that close with her neighbors to give them a way in, there's a limit for what they could reasonably do. Perhaps that's the story that was missed, the importance of a more robust support network with your neighbors that might have better mitigated this tragedy, or depending on the circumstances of her death, avoided it altogether.

Baby left alone after mother dies is saved by police

If one starts with the assertion that "left alone" is somehow accusatory toward the mother (I disagree), this retains the same issue. It just moves the police involvement to the end. One issue is that it's a little awkward to have "after mother dies" between the subject and verb. It also omits the fact the baby was alone for days, if the baby was saved moments after the mother's death, that's significantly different.

[–] ddplf@szmer.info 10 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I don't know, maybe I don't realize the actual connotations of the phrase "being left alone", but IMO she's not just overreacting - she's gone absolutely batshit nuclear over some fucking (actually not) inadequate wording.

[–] ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 15 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

"Left alone" is an intentional act. The mother died so unless it was suicide she didn't leave the baby alone. And then it was in the US and the US has the highest maternal mortality in the West. The headline downplays the tragedy of the mother's death, ignores the tragedy of the high maternal mortality, makes it sound a bit like she was a bad mother rather than a mother that society didn't do right by.

Edit: even a suicide isn't leaving the baby alone because if you are that far out I'm not going to hold you responsible for the baby (although if I knew you I might have a very hard time forgiving / be unable to forgive you).

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 0 points 6 hours ago

“Left alone” is an intentional act.

Not necessarily. "The man's death left his wife alone." There's no intention in that, nor even a hint of negligence.

It seems an absolutely utterly normal phrase to describe what happened to the infant in the wake of her mother's death.

They can't say much specific about her death or circumstances because her identity and circumstances of death were not released. They can't claim "orphaned" because they don't know enough about the family. All they know in the reporting is that circumstances left an infant alone with her dead mother's body. The only thing they have is the bodycam footage of an infant and terse description of the scene. No idea if her death was particularly related to maternity. They could have tossed the word 'tragic' in there but it seems self evident.

[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 5 points 12 hours ago

Twatter and ShitGPT have a lot to answer for. It seems like a significant amount of people have forgotten how to read.

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