Ever consider dropping your kid at the zoo? What if there were nine of them?
The new Nebraska safe haven law allowed a father to walk into the Creighton University Medical Center and drop not one, not two, but NINE children and make a fast getaway. The siblings, aged 1 through 17, automatically became wards of the state, which cannot tough their biological father with any charges of abandonment.
Most states allow parents 72 hours after a child's birth to leave a child at a designated safe place without risk of prosecution. But Nebraska officials couldn't agree on a limit – they approved open-ended legislation that allows parents to drop off a "child." Since July, three kids aged 11 to 15 have been abandoned (not including this family) under the new safe haven law. But never a whole family, and certainly not one this big.
Each abandonment in recent weeks has thrown more egg on the face of wishy washy politicians, but this particular case stands out for the warning it sends to parents who shoot for big families - yes, you love them and yes, they can drive you up the wall. That's because they're supposed to act as very expensive birth control.
My very Catholic grandparents had seven back when they were considered the small family on the block. I'm refusing to walk in my grandmother's very able footsteps because I just can't imagine handling a screaming baby and a college-bound rebel. Imagine buying diapers for one kid and tampons for another, paying nursery school and college tuitions in the same month and nursing your newborn through your oldest's high school graduation?
I'd have to find a big zoo.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Based on comments below, I decided to pull the photo that originally appeared with this story. It was not meant to offend people based on the race/ethnicity of the family pictured - in fact it was simply a photo of parents with nine kids as one comment notes. The reason I'm removing the photo is because some people seem to believe this was a picture of the family described in the article. There was no intention to mislead readers.
Source: Omaha World Herald
Image: The Sun
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