Rethinking 'safe havens' for legal desertion of babies
By Adam Pertman
From the April 04, 2003 edition of The Christian Science Monitor - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0404/p11s01-coop.html
The best social policies result from solid research, thoughtful
planning, and careful implementation. Unfortunately, these basic
standards haven't been applied by the 44 states that have now passed
laws to address the disconcerting, very real problem of infants being
abandoned in dumpsters, bathrooms, and other dangerous places.
Instead, with too little information about the causes of the
phenomenon or the potential effectiveness of the response, lawmakers
nationwide have created so-called "safe havens" - usually hospitals,
police stations, and firehouses - where new mothers can legally desert
their babies, anonymously and without the risk of prosecution.
These well-intentioned laws have spread so rapidly (all in the past
three years) because they promise an intuitively appealing, easy fix.
But complex social problems are rarely resolved through simple,
feel-good solutions. So it should come as no surprise that an extensive
new study by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York not
only concludes that there is no evidence the safe haven statutes are
working, but also finds that they are causing serious unintended
consequences.
First, why the laws aren't working: In a nutshell, a mother who is
so distraught or so in denial that she would stuff her newborn into a
trash can is not likely, instead, to ask her boyfriend for a ride to
the police station. The study found that to be the major reason unsafe
abandonments are continuing unabated, even in states that advertise
their "safe havens" on highway billboards and in public-service TV
commercials.
Women in distress need counseling and support, not to mention pre-
and postnatal medical assistance. But these laws don't even pretend to
offer resources to help mothers deliver healthy babies or to resolve
the traumas that lead them to jeopardize their newborns' lives.
This don't ask, don't tell approach does, however, open a Pandora's box.
It undermines the established legal rights of biological fathers to
parent their own children, for instance, while precluding grandparents
and other relatives from helping to care for the mother or her child.
Alternatively, it creates the opportunity for irate boyfriends or
disapproving family members to coerce an emotionally fragile teenager
into deserting her baby, or even to take the child themselves and
anonymously abandon it.
Worst of all, these laws proclaim, loud and clear, that deserting a
child is socially sanctioned behavior. That's an unnerving message for
our culture to be sending. And it is already being heard: Some women
who never would have thought to deprive their offspring of
genealogical, personal, or even critically important medical
information are doing so now, because they've been given an option
that's less of a hassle than receiving parenting counseling or filling
out adoption paperwork.
So there are indeed infants being left at safe havens, but few if
any of them would have been carelessly given up if these laws didn't
exist. Rather, they are children who otherwise would have been adopted
through traditional means or been raised by birth relatives, but who
now must grow up without any prospect of knowing the most basic facts
about themselves.
The new Adoption Institute study raises other red flags, too, from
specific concerns such as whether these laws actually encourage women
to conceal their pregnancies and give birth unsafely, to the sweeping
indictment that anonymous abandonment flies in the face of recognized
best practices developed for decades by child-welfare and adoption
professionals.
The proponents of safe havens often answer criticism by saying their
approach is worthwhile even if it saves just one baby's life.
I have an alternative suggestion: Let's aim higher. Let's conduct
the solid research, and then do the thoughtful planning and careful
implementation. That way, we can develop policies that help women who
face crisis pregnancies, prevent infant abandonment - and maybe, just
maybe, save all the babies' lives.
* Adam Pertman is executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson
Adoption Institute. He wrote 'Adoption Nation: How the Adoption
Revolution Is Transforming America.'
