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Safe-Haven Laws: Making the Case

Posted on: Thursday, 9 December 2004, 15:00 CST

SAFE-HAVEN laws don't work, and [your] recent column goes a good way toward explaining why," a reader wrote. "[You] plead eloquently for the lives of the unborn, but I fail to detect any compassion for the panicked teenager whose circumstances we do not begin to understand."

In reverse order, it should be noted that authorities in New Jersey understand that panic around childbirth is not an emotion reserved for teenagers but one felt by mothers of any age who, for whatever reason, can't care for a newborn. In fact, the Safe Haven Law came into being because some of those younger and older scared moms committed murder to dispose of their babies. Moreover, the column in this space last week was not about the "unborn" but about the born and their mothers.

Most important, to say the law doesn't work is to ignore the facts. In New Jersey right now there are 18 girls and boys ranging in age from about 11 months to about 4 years who are living proof of precisely how brilliant is this law. Could it work better if more people knew about its existence - the toll-free, round-the-clock hotline is 877-839-2339 - and its uncomplicated rules? Absolutely. Could there be more advertising and public service announcements? Of course, and state officials say they're working on the 2005 campaign now. Could the telephone number be publicized more? Definitely.

Could young girls use a little more information about the unintended consequences of sex and how to prevent them? Certainly.

But at the center is the law. Briefly, the Safe Haven Law allows a mother or her representative to take her baby - up to 30 days old and with no sign of abuse - to a police station or emergency room, leave it there and walk out without identifying herself. Data is collected only if the person leaving a baby volunteers such information.

A review of some of the information police and hospital workers gleaned during Safe Haven surrenders and from people arrested after improper abandonments smashes several stereotypes. For one, giving birth to unwanted children is not strictly a problem of teenage girls.

The first to turn a baby over to authorities under the new law wasn't a scared 16-year old. Records show she was in her late 20s, had four children at home and was unable to support a fifth. Would she have harmed that fifth baby? No one can know. But the fact is she gave him to a cop and today, with luck, that kid is a toddler in a loving home. That's what he deserved.

Soon after that first surrender, a woman in her early 30s who had hidden her pregnancy as long as she could gave birth and quickly gave the baby to the state. This was because her husband was not the father.

Sixteen more Safe Haven babies followed. Four of the mothers were in their 20s or older and three were teenagers older than 17. The ages of the others are not known.

That's 18 surrenders and 18 living kids. Does anyone really want to take those children aside in another few years to explain why the Safe Haven Law is a failure? But also since 2000, 15 other babies were abandoned in dangerous conditions.

A 1-day-old girl was left on a doorstep in Springfield. She was bundled up for the weather. She wore a jumper, a hat and socks, plus a bib. There were little pink rabbits on the bib.

On Christmas Eve in 2001 in Pleasantville, someone left a 1-week- old girl in the rain outside an unoccupied condo unit. She was discovered, taken to the hospital and found to be in good health.

Other inconvenient babies have turned up in a garbage can, in a Dumpster, in front of a pizzeria, in a clump of bushes at the beach and outside a crack house. In this last case, a 40-year old woman gave birth, put the baby boy in a plastic bag outside, and went back for more smoke.

Another 40-year-old woman abandoned her son in Neptune City. A mother in her 20s tried to drown her newborn in a toilet bowl, but her boyfriend rescued the baby. In March 2002, a man in Hackensack heard an odd noise in his back yard. It was a newborn girl exposed to the cold of winter. All these babies survived. They're a little tougher than we think.

But then there were the other four; a frozen baby with a black eye and a bloody mouth in a car in Rahway, a boy in Barrington, a girl found strangled in a bag on the beach at Ventnor, a boy with a fractured skull washed ashore at Ideal Beach in Middletown.

This issue of safe havens has brought out the best in people and offers to help the mothers of unwanted kids. More on them later.

For now, here's that number again for Operation Safe Haven's toll- free hot line: 877-839-2339.

* * *

Record Columnist Jeff Page also writes the North Jersey column. Send comments about this column to oped@northjersey.com.

Source: Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.

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