On Sept. 8, on the Internet, I saw an article about how some hospitals are backing off on birth announcements in the newspapers. The reason for it was because there were kidnappings and they wanted to avoid them. Hospitals now need to ask permission of the parents to publish the baby’s first and middle names, a photo of the baby, birth information and the first names of the parents.

I think it is a great idea that a baby’s birth is put in the paper. It always makes you feel a little better to know that there is a new life in the world. Not knowing that there have been kidnappings because of the information in the newspaper, people need to take action.

I totally agree to getting permission for releasing the newborn’s information. I don’t think that it is a great idea that the information was released to the newspaper without permission in the first place. It is a problem when parents don’t have control over having their child’s information being released to a newspaper.

Now that most hospitals in Maine are making a decision about this, perhaps there will be a lot less kidnappings of babies. Even though we won’t know all of the births that happen, we can know that a lot more babies are safe because of the precaution.

Chassidy Hilchey