On one of the stories where I talked about the Safe Haven Laws in most states a commenter brought up the great point is that the reason we still have so many baby dumpings and the like is that the states all have different laws. They have different names for them and different places that babies can be left not to mention different grace periods. Making things even more difficult is that the laws are not widely publicized. Now to make matters even more complicated the vaguest safe haven laws went into effect this past Friday in Nebraska.
Under the Nebraska laws, there is no age restriction to how old the child being dropped off can be. As with most things that start out with good intentions this will lead to widespread abuse of the laws. According to the article, at least one adoption agency has received inquiries from people who wanted to get rid of their kids who were more than a year old.
The law is unnecessarily confusing as well. In most safe haven cases a baby can be dropped off at a hospital or police or fire station without any fear of prosecution if the baby is unharmed. It seems like under the Nebraska law prosecution can still happen.
The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services will take custody of safe haven children and treat those cases the same as other cases of abandonment, said Todd Landry, director of children and family services.
That means trying to identify the child’s parents and family and, if the parents can be found, assessing whether the child should be reunited with them.
I thought the whole point of safe haven laws were to protect the children and not reunite them with the parents that abandoned them.
I can almost guarantee you that this law will be abused and it won’t prevent baby dumpings from happening, unfortunately.
There needs to be a federally uniform safe haven law since the states can’t seem to get it together and for the most part, have not prevented baby dumpings.
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