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Jeb Bush In 1995: Unwed Mothers Should Be Publicly Shamed

Jeb Bush In 1995: Unwed Mothers Should Be Publicly Shamed
Posted: 06/09/2015 10:31 am EDT

Public shaming would be an effective way to regulate the “irresponsible behavior” of unwed mothers, misbehaving teenagers and welfare recipients, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) argued in his 1995 book Profiles in Character.

In a chapter called "The Restoration of Shame,” the likely 2016 presidential candidate made the case that restoring the art of public humiliation could help prevent pregnancies “out of wedlock.”

    One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful.

Bush points to Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, in which the main character is forced to wear a large red "A" for "adulterer" on her clothes to punish her for having an extramarital affair that produced a child, as an early model for his worldview. "Infamous shotgun weddings and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter are reminders that public condemnation of irresponsible sexual behavior has strong historical roots,” Bush wrote.

As governor of Florida in 2001, Bush had the opportunity to test his theory on public shaming. He declined to veto a very controversial bill that required single mothers who did not know the identity of the father to publish their sexual histories in a newspaper before they could legally put their babies up for adoption. He later signed a repeal of the so-called "Scarlet Letter" law in 2003 after it was successfully challenged in court.

Bush's ideas about public shaming extended beyond unwed parents. He said American schools and the welfare system could use a healthy dose of shame as well. “For many, it is more shameful to work than to take public assistance -- that is how backward shame has become!” he wrote, adding that the juvenile criminal justice system also "seems to be lacking in humiliation."

    In the context of present-day society we need to make kids feel shame before their friends rather than their family. The Miami Herald columnist Robert Steinback has a good idea. He suggests dressing these juveniles in frilly pink jumpsuits and making them sweep the streets of their own neighborhoods! Would these kids be so cavalier then?

It's worth pointing out that the kind of public shaming Bush described has come under fire recently in response to the growing trend of parents humiliating their children on social media to punish them. A 13-year-old girl committed suicide last month after her father posted a video of himself cutting off her long hair on YouTube because she had disobeyed him.

YouTube and social media, of course, did not exist when Bush wrote his book in 1995. But the former governor makes clear that "society needs to relearn the art of public and private disapproval and how to make those to engage in some undesirable behavior feel some sense of shame."

Bush did not respond to a request for comment.

Update: June 10 -- Steinback, the former Miami Herald columnist, told HuffPost that "until today, I was unaware that Governor Bush had cited my column on public shaming of juvenile criminal offenders in his 1995 book."

"My column made reference only to young offenders who often harbor a mistaken romance about jail and prison, and might consider incarceration a perverse badge of honor. I suggested that sentencing them to wear frilly pink jumpsuits and performing a public duty such as street sweeping in their own neighborhood might serve as more of a deterrent than jail time. I made no mention of using such a tactic with unwed pregnant teens. In fact, I would consider such a policy utterly horrific. Pregnancy is not and should never be treated as a crime. Unwed girls in such circumstances are most likely experiencing considerable personal and psychological stress and anxiety that would only be exacerbated by shaming them publicly," he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/09/jeb-bush-1995-book_n_7542964.html
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649848 tn?1534633700
In all fairness, it wasn't "just" Governor Bush calling for such "shaming" of unwed mothers...but it's not a drummed up story and it's not going to go away.  It would be nice, though if they'd tell it like it was and put the blame where it belongs - on the entire FL legislature, at the time, though Gov Bush signed it into a very bad law...

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123843

Stossel on Fla. 'Scarlet Letter' Law
Sept. 20, 2002
Commentary
By John Stossel via

Do you want to adopt a child? Thousands of couples want to, and thousands have been waiting, hoping, for years. Now Florida legislators have passed a law they say will make adoptions more "secure." Sounds good, but lawmakers have shown us time and again that their pursuit of perfection often makes things worse.

Critics say this new law will likely lead to FEWER adoptions, more abortions, and to children being raised by parents who admit they're not ready for parenthood.

Take the case of Melissa Colleran. Colleran is an unemployed 18-year-old who's barely able to pay the rent on her Tampa home. She said she doesn't think she's "emotionally or financially ready to take care of a child." Unfortunately, she's seven months pregnant.

Colleran said she doesn't know who the father is, only that he was a stranger she met in a bar. "It was a one-night stand, something that just happened, maybe it shouldn't have happened, but it happened," Colleran said.

She decided she wanted to put the baby up for adoption, but the new law makes that harder. Florida legislators decreed that before an adoption can take place, birth mothers who don't know who or where the biological father is must advertise in newspapers to try to find him. Colleran would have to list the name of every possible father, and her name.

Colleran said she'd have to disclose "basically everything about my sexual history, within the time that I conceived. And I think this is disgusting, it makes me feel very ashamed."

So, Colleran has decided not to place one of the ads. "It is something that should be between me and the person I shared it with, not me, the person I shared it with, the guy down the block, and the guy who is reading the newspaper across from me on a bus," Colleran said.

More Shame, Fewer Adoptions?

Colleran says she plans to keep her baby and try to raise him as a single mom. "I was going to place the baby for adoption, and when I heard about this law, just thinking about people seeing my name and all these things in the paper, I decided not to," she said.

Other women are opting to have abortions.

"How far do we have to go to find the birth father that's a one-night stand in a bar?" asked adoption lawyer Jeanne Tate.

Tate says Florida's new law means fewer children are being adopted. "I see it in my practice. I see girls who are choosing abortion over adoption," she said.

So why require these ads? Because of horror stories like that of "Baby Jessica." She was the little girl taken from the only home she'd known when her biological father suddenly appeared saying, he hadn't know he had a child and that no one had tried to find him.

But will ads help? They may satisfy the state's requirements, but lawyers who talked to ABCNEWS didn't know of any father who'd responded to one. The ads sure do humiliate mothers, and they seem to make it harder for women who want give up their children.

"This isn't making it harder. This is making it final and secure," according to Deborah Marks, who helped write Florida's new law. Marks said the law would prevent biological fathers from disrupting adoptions.

Marks acknowledged that this doesn't happen often. She said she didn't have a statistic on how many fathers had disrupted adoptions, "but it happens sometimes."

Do we need a humiliating law because of something that rarely occurs? Marks thinks we do. "If we could stop even one of those cases from happening by doing some due process up front, it would be a benefit," she said.

The law doesn't apply only to young women like Melissa Colleran. It also applies to underage girls and to women who have been raped.

"There is no exception for rape. … You cannot just allow someone to say they were raped and use that as an excuse not to provide a name," Marks said.

Marks said she doesn't think lawyers can solve every problem by passing more laws. According to Marks, "It was already the law that you had to find birth fathers. … What this law did was lay out specifics of what people had to do."

Great. Humiliating specifics that discourage adoption, encourage abortion, and lead women like Melissa Colleran to keep babies they fear they're not prepared to care for.

Give me a break! "
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The law was repealed May 31, 2003... statistics showed that it caused more women/girls to seek abortions or to try to raise babies for which they were not prepared.

''Only a male-dominated legislature could possibly pass a law that facilitates adoptions by requiring public humiliation of women,'' Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said.

''You've got to have a real narrow vision to congratulate the governor for signing a repeal of a statute that, as a result of a lawsuit we were involved in, the courts struck down as unconstitutional,'' he said. ''The legislature shouldn't have passed it in the first place.''

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/31/us/florida-scarlet-letter-law-is-repealed-by-gov-bush.html

The legislature should never have passed the bill and Gov Bush should never have signed it into law...
Helpful - 0
Avatar universal
I see nothing about him calling for public shaming of unwed mothers. Just another fake story drummed up by the liberals. Just like the NYT is doing to Rubio.
Helpful - 0
649848 tn?1534633700
He might as well get out of the race; I can't see that he stands a chance of winning the Presidency.  He has almost as much going against him as Hillary and people are far less forgiving of the stupidity of a Bush than they are of the stupidity of a Clinton...
Helpful - 0
163305 tn?1333668571
Gee, one more reason to not like the guy.
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