Pro-life church 'heartbroken' after young child found alive in dumpster

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Members of a small pro-life church in Ardmore, Oklahoma, were left “heartbroken” Saturday after local police discovered a baby in their dumpster.

While Ardmore police did not identify the church where they found the child in the dumpster, Associate Pastor Ed Skidmore of House of Prayer on Harris Street told The Christian Post in an interview Tuesday that the baby was found at their church.

“Of course we were absolutely heartbroken,” Skidmore said. “We’re pro-life from the moment of conception. We support babies in the womb. We support our local pregnancy center. We support mothers. Our hearts have gone out to the dad, the mom, the baby. We are absolutely heartbroken.” 

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The parents and baby have no known affiliation with the church where the child was left. 

Ardmore police told WLBT 3 that the young child was found around 3 p.m. and was in stable condition as of Saturday night but did not reveal much else about the discovery. Investigators did not immediately respond to requests from CP for more information.

Skidmore told CP that investigators on the scene told him that it was the mother who alerted them that the baby was left in the dumpster and that no one was at the church at the time the baby was left there.

“I did talk to the police officers that were here and they did say that it was the mother that gave them the information to where the baby was and she was at another location. That’s all they would tell me,” Skidmore said.

He explained that while the baby was not a newborn, the child was several weeks old based on what he was told.

Skidmore further noted that even though his small congregation of approximately 60 members does not offer support for mothers in crisis, the town has many resources to help.

“I do know that we have a wonderful pregnancy center here in town that works with lots of women and provides many avenues of help for women that are pregnant that want to keep their baby,” he said.

“I don’t know any of the circumstances behind the situation … [but] I know this — in this world without Christ, the enemy will try to tell us that there are permanent solutions to temporary problems,” he said. “And when we are not surrounded by people that really care for us it can spin out of control really fast. But we were heartbroken [by the dumping of the baby].”

Skidmore said he doesn’t know why the mother chose to dump her child but said he told his church, which has never experienced anything like this in the eight years he has served in leadership, it should be taken as a divine message to pray more.

“This is what I told my congregation. I don’t know if this was an area of town that she lived in, I don’t know. But I know that that baby was here so that we could be as a body praying specifically,” he said. “We just need to bind our hearts together to pray for the mom and dad and the child. We have a wonderful congregation. We’re just heartbroken that somebody was put in a position of hopelessness like that.”