Illinois Goes 1 Year With No Illegally Abandoned Babies
CHICAGO (WBBM) -- The head of the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation is celebrating the first year in Illinois without a single baby being abandoned illegally.
There were five babies relinquished legally, but none were abandoned illegally for the last 365 days, the first such one-year period since the Foundation started keeping records.
There were four babies abandoned illegally during fiscal year 2010 -- two survived, two died.
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Dawn Geras attributes the one year record to the Illinois Save Haven Program which allows mothers unable to tend their newborns to leave the babies at police stations, fire stations, hospitals, and now with campus police at colleges throughout the state.
The law says any unharmed newborn up to t0 30 days old may be legally relinquished to staff at any designated Safe Haven without any questions asked or fear of prosecution.
Geras says before the Save Haven Program, babies were being left in dumpsters and behind buildings.
She estimates that the lives of 69 babies have been legally relinquished and thus saved since the Safe Haven idea became Illinois law in 2001.
Statistics of babies legally abandoned:
By Mother's Age:
14 to 17 - 16%;
18 to 24 - 46%;
25 to 30 - 23%;
31 to 41 - 15%
By Newborn's Race:
African/Black - 28%
Caucasian/White - 44%
Latino - 19%
Mixed/other - 7%
Geras says research contradicts the idea of a mother who abandons a new born as young, poor, unemployed and single.
Geras says those who abandoned children illegally had other children and had regular jobs. Half were living with the baby's father.
