Here's tonight's official DovBear unsubstantiated rumor: Rhenquist is retiring.
Whoops. Hahaha. My bad. That was Drudge's unsubstantiated rumor. My unsubstantiated rumor is this: Hasidic parents abandon undesired newborns in the hospital.
Per my source (a Kiryas Joel social worker) an "undesired newborn" is any infant with a defect, and per the law it's perfectly okay to leave them behind (It's legal to abandon a child at a fire station or hospital.) And, to tell you the truth, this strikes me as a sound practice, especially for a family with lots of kids and little money.
The problem, by my lights comes later, when the parents of the abandoned child are asked by a perspective set of in-laws, "How many children do you have?"
Hasidim (again relying on the KJ social worker) are very particular about family medical histories when it comes to matching up their children. In fact, the KJ social worker says the reason so many KJ children are abandoned is because their parents worry the presence of a "special child" on the family tree will cause their healthy children to receive less desirable matches.
So how do they answer the question?
Do they tell the truth and sabatoge the shiduch? Do they lie? Or do they just deflect the question?