'Safe Havens' For Babies Questioned

The so-called "safe haven" laws that have been enacted in 42 states to allow the anonymous abandonment of newborn babies may be causing serious, unanticipated problems, a leading adoption institute said Monday.

Most of the laws were enacted hastily over the past three years, often in response to a tragedy, and without the states sufficiently evaluating their effectiveness first, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute said in a report.

"By providing a 'no hassle' route for ending parental responsibility, safe-haven laws encourage mothers to conceal their pregnancies, give birth unsafely and leave their children anonymously, undermining established and effective child welfare and adoption policy," the report says.

The laws' goal of protecting unwanted newborns is admirable, but they don't address the factors causing babies to be abandoned, the report says.

They also send a signal that abandonment is OK, and they prevent abandoned children from ever learning their medical or genealogical histories, the report says.

"We're having more babies abandoned than ever before," Debbe Magnusen, founder of Costa Mesa, Calif.-based Project Cuddle, which runs a 24-hour hotline for women who are hiding pregnancies or contemplating abandoning babies, told The Los Angeles Times.

Project Cuddle said it has helped more than 450 mothers in the past seven years, including one who smuggled her baby out of her house in a laundry basket and called the hotline from a phone booth.

In Los Angeles County, 14 babies were found abandoned in 2001, and 11 of them died. Not a single woman that year took advantage of the safe haven law. In 2002, 10 babies were safely surrendered, but 13 were abandoned, eight of whom died, according to county statistics. Already in 2003, three newborns have been found dead in L.A. County, two of them in trash bins.

Supporters of safe-haven laws, including legislators of both parties in statehouses nationwide, say the procedures are worthwhile if they save even one infant's life. Donaldson institute executive director Adam Pertman acknowledged that such arguments are difficult to counter.

"Who is going to vote against saving lives?" Pertman said. "It's a simple, feel-good solution. But if we have to have these laws, let's at least make them work — they need to be dramatically changed and improved."

The New York-based institute, which analyzes and proposes adoption policies, based its conclusions on input gathered nationwide from social workers, family law experts, state health officials and the National Conference of State Legislatures, as well as analysis of recent studies of women who kill their newborn infants.

The Donaldson report urges states to conduct additional research on infant abandonment and to be more aggressive in offering counseling to pregnant women, especially teens. It also called for stronger efforts to notify the abandoned babies' fathers, and give them a chance to seek custody.

Women who abandon their babies come from all ethnic groups and income levels, said Michelle Oberman, a law professor at DePaul University, author of the book titled "Mothers Who Kill Their Children." Often, they are classic "good girls," she told The Times, bright students, thoughtful daughters, anxious to please, terrified of making a mistake.

A number of them have had little sexual experience; others already have had children, experts said.

Texas was the first state to enact safe haven legislation, in 1999. Since then, 41 states have followed suit, and the Wyoming legislature is currently considering a safe-haven law. The other states without such laws are Alaska, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Vermont and Virginia.

The laws were created to deter mothers, typically young and unmarried, from concealing their pregnancies, giving birth in private and then disposing of their newborn's bodies. Though details vary by state, the laws enable women to avoid prosecution if they leave babies at a designated safe location such as a hospital, fire house or police station.

No comprehensive statistics are available on the number of babies abandoned through safe haven procedures; not all states with the laws keep an official count. However, the National Conference of State Legislatures, in a report last month, said the laws have had relatively limited effect.

Even in states with the laws, unlawful abandonment is a persistent problem, the NCSL said.

Overall in California, it said, 20 babies were safely surrendered in the first year and a half after its safe haven law took effect in 2001, but 38 babies were illegally abandoned in the same period, including 17 found dead.

"For women who might otherwise seek help from family, friends and social service agencies, the enactment of safe haven laws might encourage them to anonymously abandon their newborns rather than take advantage of their traditional network of support," the NCSL said.

Nancy Larraine Hoffmann, the state senator who sponsored New York's abandoned-baby legislation in 2000, said she was surprised that the laws were encountering such criticism.

"If a girl goes through an entire pregnancy telling no one, and then experiences the labor and delivery all by herself, it's clear she is determined that no one should find out she is pregnant," Hoffmann said. "At the very least, we should allow them to surrender the baby safely without fear of prosecution."

Laure Krupp, executive director of Safe Place for Newborns in Minneapolis, also defended the laws.

"Can they be refined? My answer would be, 'Sure,'" she said. "But don't cut these programs off at the knees. They are working. Children's lives have been saved who otherwise should have been abandoned and died."

The Washington-based Child Welfare League of America, a prominent advocacy group, has not taken an official position on safe-haven laws, but shares some of the Donaldson institute's concerns, said spokeswoman Joyce Johnson.

"There needed to be a component in the laws for evaluation of their effectiveness, and only a few states did that," she said. "It feels good, to say you've done something to help save a life. But unfortunately, it's a little more complicated than that."