Two newborn babies in a week. One swathed in bubble wrap and left to die in a drain. The other naked and buried crudely in the sand to be found by two little kids who will always be scarred by their horror day at the beach.

One mother who has been charged with attempted murder.

Another being sought by police for questioning after an autopsy today revealed she was a newborn little girl.

Two scenes – a week apart.

Right now, today, as you read this post, there are thousands of women around Australia who are pregnant and who desperately don’t want to be.  They may be distressed or depressed, ashamed or horrified, shocked or frantic about the prospect of having a baby they don’t want or can’t take care of.

Some of these women are teenagers but the majority are not. The myth of unwanted pregnancies only happening to naive, irresponsible young girls is an outdated one. There are myriad complex reasons why a woman doesn’t want to have a baby. Religious reasons. Financial reasons. Medical reasons. Mental health reasons.

She might be in a violent or abusive relationship.

She might be single and unable or unwilling to raise a baby alone.

She might have other children whose welfare will be compromised by the strain of another baby.

She might be unmarried and from a family or culture who do not accept babies born outside marriage.

She might feel that her family is complete, that she’s done having babies.

Her partner may have suddenly disappeared from her life.

Her husband might not want to be a Dad again.

She might just have different plans for her life that don’t involve being a mother at this point.

Pregnant women have choices. Difficult, heart-wrenching choices, but choices all the same.

 Perhaps some of these factors led one Sydney mother to drop her baby down a drain to die last week. And perhaps too, they contributed to the death of the newborn girl discovered yesterday, buried 30cm deep in the sand.

One day we may know more about the circumstances leading up to those babies being found by strangers. What we will never know is how many other babies die, never to be found. Desperate people do desperate things. They always have. And many of them remain secrets forever.

It’s also worth observing that automatically ascribing every heinous act to “mental illness” is neither accurate nor helpful. While there is a place for empathy, using mental illness as an armchair explanation or justification doesn’t serve the cause of mental illness nor does it serve to protect vulnerable children.

What’s crucial to remember is that every woman in Australia in 2014 who does not want to have a baby has choices. Whether she’s 6 weeks or 9 months pregnant, she has choices. Choices that mean she does not have to kill or attempt to kill her newborn.

And we must not forget that, no matter how much empathy we have for the circumstances that may lead someone to commit such a heinous act.

The crime scene at Maroubra yesterday.

In the hope that we can, as a community, prevent more babies from being killed or left to die, here at Mamamia we have compiled the following list of links to services that can help pregnant women who don’t want to have or keep their babies.

Because knowledge is power, something that’s crucial at a time when so many women feel so very helpless. And because the more women who are aware of their choices, the better.