Source:   Los Angeles Times, Focus on the Family; March 20, 2003

Safe Haven Laws May Not Be Saving Babies as Intended

Los Angeles, CA -- When the labor pains hit, the 16-year-old Florida girl went into the bedroom she shared with her sister, shut the door and, as quietly as possible, gave birth to a full-term boy.

For months, she had hidden her pregnancy. She had continued to compete in high school sports and had gained almost no weight. Now there was the question of what to do.

"I wanted to call someone," she said. "I was racking my brain, like, 'Who can I call?' And I couldn't think of anyone."

So the high school junior wrapped her baby in a towel and, crying, left him in a boat parked in a driveway across the street. It was New Year's Eve. The baby was visible, lying in the back of the boat, and the girl said she intended for the neighbors to find him. But on Jan. 2, when she went to check, he lay dead of exposure.

Last week, sheriff's homicide detectives asked the Florida state attorney to charge the girl "an A student with no criminal record” with manslaughter. Detective Allen Lee said the case was easy to solve but impossible to understand.

"She's a bright and articulate individual," he said. "As smart as she is, how did she make this decision?"

The girl, who asked that her name not be used, said she didn't know about Florida's safe haven law, which allows mothers to surrender newborns at hospitals, fire stations and other locations within 72 hours of birth, no questions asked. Maybe if she had known, her baby would be alive, she said.

That is the hope of proponents and lawmakers in more than 40 states who have rushed to pass safe haven laws since Texas enacted the first one in 1999. In California, which has had a safe haven statute since 2001, officials are about to unveil the second phase of a $1.7 million drive to publicize the law. In Los Angeles County, all county vehicles will soon bear bumper stickers that read, "Don't Abandon Your Baby." But as these efforts are launched, a number of experts are questioning whether the safe haven concept works.

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

California, like many states, does not have comprehensive statistics, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of abandoned babies is not decreasing.

Already in 2003, three newborns have been found dead in Los Angeles County.

Officials say it hurts to imagine how many more tiny bodies made it to landfills without being discovered. Across the country, similar dumping continues despite safe haven laws.

"There is no evidence, none, to indicate that these laws appeal to the population at whom they were aimed," said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, which will release a study Monday analyzing the safe haven laws. Critics such as Pertman charge that the statutes are feel-good measures enacted by horror-stricken lawmakers -- usually after a publicized death -- that do little to address the circumstances that would prompt a woman to kill or dump her newborn.

Women who abandon their babies represent every ethnicity and level of wealth and poverty, said Michelle Oberman, a law professor at DePaul University who has written a book titled "Mothers Who Kill Their Children." Often, they are classic "good girls," she said, bright students, thoughtful daughters, eager to please, terrified of making a mistake.

Margaret Spinelli, a psychiatrist at Columbia University who has studied infanticide, said many of these women describe giving birth as if it were a play they were watching, not something happening to them.

"They deliver, and all of a sudden they are presented with the very thing they denied for nine months," she said. "I don't think it's a simple panic. ... I think what happens then is some of them, they have this brief psychotic episode."

"Denial," said the Florida teen whose baby died in the boat, "is a very strong thing." In her health class, she had learned that teen-agers active in sports often miss menstrual periods. It didn't occur to her that she was pregnant, she said, until around her seventh month. "I wanted to be perfect so bad. I wanted to make the best grades and be in perfect shape and be the perfect daughter."

The day she discovered that her son had died, she called the sheriff's department and claimed she had found baby. Police suspected she was the mother and asked her to allow a DNA test, Lee said.

"I think eventually she would have come forward on her own," he said. As he prepared to present the case to prosecutors, he also tried to get counseling for her.

She never told the baby's father. She hasn't seen him much since he graduated last summer, nor anyone at school. What happened isn't mentioned at home, either, and her siblings may not know, she said.

"I cry myself to sleep" thinking about her son, she said.

Despite the report, advocates of "safe haven" laws urge caution before tampering with the system. Tom Atwood, of the National Council for Adoption, said there's no doubt these laws are saving lives.

"Just how many babies do these laws have to rescue from death in a Dumpster in order to be worthwhile?" Atwood asked.

Pertman wants the laws strengthened by requiring counseling and medical information from the mother.