Strollerderby

Poor little girl. :(

Even if they don't "safe haven" these teenagers, there is obviously a cry for help and it's a great opportunity for Nebraska to help their citizens who are most at need.  Social services and foster care need to step up to the plate.

All people in distress need sanctuaries, places where they can go for help and support. However, 'Safe Havens' are not those places.

Despite their emotional appeal, they are not what they seem. Apart from being founded on what I believe to be the fundamentally flawed principle that people (infants in particular) do not have identity rights - or that, even if they do, those rights can be justifiably abrogated to avoid the possibility (note, not the probability, and certainly not the inevitability) of harm, they do nothing to protect babies and newborns from those who really would do them harm - mothers who are so frightened and/or dissocciated that they'd kill or dump their kids anyway.

SHs may even cause some women to forgo health care in an attempt to keep their pregnancies hidden - something which takes foresight and planning, neither of which a distraught and isolated young woman is capable.

This story is NOT an argument for Safe Havens, but for easier access to help through counselling or social services for those who need it

Kippa, do you actually think that Safe Havens are a bad idea?  If so, you are the first person I've ever heard/read or spoken to who feels that way.  

Safe Havens are not the only option for these mothers, but it is the offer of another option if all else fails.  If you can show me a report of a mother who planned in advance to hide her pregnancy with the forethought of Safe Haven as an "out", I'd like to see it.

My original point is that Nebraska should keep their Safe Haven laws as it is turning into a way to reach people who were unaware of the social services available to them as well as maybe save a baby.  Where is the harm in that?

Mamallama, Safe havens are sacred cows. People can't bear like to question them.

Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute has said it far better than I can. Here's a link to an article by him:

www.csmonitor.com/.../p11s01-coop.html

I can't offer you a specific example of someone who planned to SH anonymously and did so successfully - probably because if successful, it would have been unlikely to have been made public.

After all, anonymity's the point, isn't it? These cases just aren't open to scrutiny.

However, I do remember a case where the body of a twenty-something year old schoolteacher (phys. ed, I think) was found in a hotel room beside that of her dead full-term newborn child. Neither her parents nor the man to whom she was engaged had had had any knowledge of her pregnancy. I can't remember which state this was in, but I'm certain it was a safe haven state, and one can reasonably speculate that safe havening was her intention.

This is one reason among others that I take issue with the argument that if it saves one, it will all have been worthwhile. Because lives (of both mother and child) can be (and are) lost through lack of medical attention just as a newborn's can through unsafe abandonment.

IMO, Safe Havens are not the answer.

Really, I doubt there IS an easy answer. But I surely believe that a much better and more ethical way would be to educate and inform young people, to encourage them to excercise restraint, and to treat themselves and others with respect.

Instead of pushing legal anonymous abandonment we should  be making people aware of the social services available to them, and working to improve access to these services.

I testified against the Safe Haven law when it was legislated in California, but frankly these laws are so politically appealing that their rapid passage across the US was something of phenomenon. I view them as nothing more than drive-through relinquishments. Since in most states investigations into the circumstances of women who abandon their babies through Safe Havens are non-existent we really have no idea whether the babies in question were in fact at-risk for lethal abandonment (the rationale for the laws) or not. The bureaucrats who administer Safe Haven programs have every incentive to portray every baby left in a Safe Have as a baby saved from a dumpster, but the truth is that lethal abandonment remains a steady if statistically insignificant occurance.

The Nebraska law is actually a logical extension of the child welfare philosophy at the heart of Safe Havens. If not babies, why not teens? Why not seniors?

Historically legalized abandonment has always had problems with defining what babies "qualify". In the fifteenth century several European countries instituted legalized abandonment through the Church, but found that the program, put in place for single mothers-at-risk was often used by married couples in economic straits. Twas ever thus...

A real Safe Haven would be a system of shelter and counseling for women who are overwhelmed by new motherhood, whether through economics or postpartum. Simply promoting legalized abandonment presents a permanent and traumatic solution to what are in the main temporary problems.

" A real Safe Haven would be a system of shelter and counseling for women who are overwhelmed by new motherhood, whether through economics or postpartum. Simply promoting legalized abandonment presents a permanent and traumatic solution to what are in the main temporary problems."

In a nutshell.

Thank you, Mr. Ron.