"I killed my baby."

I think I have a pretty good idea about who is going to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism this year. That would be Gene Weingarten, whose story about parents who accidentally killed their children by forgetting them in the backseat of their cars appears in today's Washington Post Magazine. Weingarten's story is compassionate but unsentimental, wrenching and moving while avoiding all sensationalism, and above all, nonjudgmental--just as, after reading this piece, we should be about the people who are now punishing themselves more than any court could do (yes, most were either not charged or found not guilty when they were.)

Read it, but be sure to have plenty of tissues near by. It could have happened to you--and don't fool yourself into thinking that it couldn't have.

Photo: Lyn Balfour, who left her 9 month old son Bryce in her car while it was parked at her place of work./Lisa Provence

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jqb said…
Definitely Pulitzer worthy. An incredible piece of moving, empathic, effective, mind- and life- changing journalism; I'm still in tears over this a day after reading it. (When I read "It was, she said, unintelligible screaming", I did some of my own, and I still can't read that paragraph without choking up.)

I want to share it, but I'm reluctant to impose that much heart wrench on my friends. But I do think I'll send it to Tom Clark of naturalism.org, as it ties into his arguments against a justice system based on retribution.