Safe haven law raises abandonment concerns

Nebraska adopted its own safe haven law July 18, making it the last of all 50 states to do so.

Originally dubbed "Baby Moses Laws," after the sea-parting prophet whose mother hid him in a basket among the Nile's reeds, safe haven laws shield a mother from any neglect charges if she abandon her baby at a hospital.

Most states allow a parent to drop the baby off at a hospital within three to 30 days of the child's birth. But Nebraska law has drawn national attention because here, anyone - even non-relatives - can legally abandon a child at a hospital until the child is 19 years old.

Arnie Stuthman, a Nebraska state senator from Platte Center, Neb., proposed the bill. He said including older children in the law wasn't in the original bill, but he "compromised" and added the provision in hopes of preventing child abuse.

"There were a couple of babies in Nebraska who were left to die," Stuthman said. "We wanted to give parents another option."

After children are left at a hospital, they become wards of the state and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services places them in foster care.

"Our process doesn't change," said Jeanne Atkinson, a public information officer for NDHHS.

Atkinson said the department will tally the number of abandoned children in Nebraska every month beginning Jan. 1, 2009. She did not know if any children had been abandoned in the past two months since the law took effect.

But abandoning a child at a hospital is not the same as putting the child up for adoption, said Karen Authier, executive director of the adoption agency Nebraska Children's Home Society.

Authier said the Nebraska law, unlike some other states, puts the abandoned children in the hands of temporary foster families instead of adoption agencies, which put children in permanent homes.

"It's not the same thing," Authier said of abandonment and adoption. "I've worked with adults who were abandoned. It's a life-long issue."

Authier said people should be made more aware of available counseling and adoptive services. Most adoption agencies allow pregnant mothers to meet with counselors and pick which couple will raise her baby. They also can select open adoptions in which the biological parents stay involved in the child's life.

"In the middle ages, towns would have windows where babies could be dropped of at," Authier said. "But my goodness, that was centuries ago."

Another problem with legalized abandonment is the child's future caretakers will not have any genetic information or the child's family's medical history, Authier said.

And in Nebraska "you don't even have to be a parent," she said. The baby could be dropped off at a hospital by "an angry mother-in-law or a baby sitter."

But despite its legality, Stuthman said abandoning a child is a last resort.

"I hope no child gets left at a hospital," Stuthman said. "But I don't want to see another child in Nebraska left in a dumpster or left to die in a creek bed."

ryanboetel@dailynebraskan.com