1) Lauren wrote at the top of the page:

“Should these laws be revised to remove eligibility for children of a certain age to be admitted by parents as wards of the state, or is it better that kids are safely leaving environments in which their parents feel unable to care for them?”

…One thing that’s remarkable about that (insightful) dichotomy Lauren phrases is (probably unintentionally) the implict choice it poses between (a) denying parents the right to easily surrender custody of older, presumably dysfunctional children (from families which might be presumed to be dysfunctional also) one the one hand, and (b) viewing the situation into which the kids are being surrendered as a safe and nurturing one. It’s an either/or dichotomy which leaves the free will and desires of the children out of the picture. Of course, for very young teens and preadolescent children their free will isn’t so much of an issue, but it certainly is an issue with the older adolescents who much of the controversy in the surrendering of children in Nebraska was about.

It’s very different, the care that a newborn gets when left at an emergency room or fire station, and the care that a 15-year-old, naturally rebellious, and probably misdiagnosed and overmedicated teen gets from the same institutions. It’s so freaking obvious what difference there is that it’s a waste of space to go much further, except to say, this is one reason why so many kids run away – and why running away can be seen rationally by a teen as an option, and why so many more dysfunctional youth did run away in decades past (maybe, we wonder, in some cases to a better environment than they could have managed to arrange with their family or in a foster home), and why so much emphasis has been placed in some runaway destination cities like L.A, Miami, Chicago, and elsewhere to meet the needs of runaways.

2) Alara Rogers wrote in comment #7:

“But the problem with this (regular adoption) is that, if the woman absolutely does not want anyone to know that she was pregnant, the thought that the kid could come back later on and tell her entire family that she was pregnant in her teens might lead her to think that dropping it in the trash is the lesser of two evils.”

… Bingo.

That’s exactly one of the main reasons why adoptions were mostly closed in this country for decades, beginning with progressive reforms of the …um… industry in the 40s and 50s. Confidentiality was key to getting women especially in those days to willingly give up children for adoption, as you can imagine. Giving up babies willingly into closed adoption was the most common experience of young women who got pregnant unintentionally (or somewhat-intentionally) in that time, as Joni Mitchell explored in the song “Little Green”, off of her 1971 album “Blue”. If you’re not familiar with that song and how it described the experience of so many young women in that time – and of Joni herself, as the song directly refers to a very young child Joni (about 22 years old herself at the time) put up for adoption in 1965 – if you’re not familiar with that, check out the song (and eventually the album, please) with these few links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Mitchell

Joni Mitchell – Little Green – October 1967 – Live

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AATdTSUfjk&feature=related

Confidential, closed adoptions were also part of a reform movement that was meant to respond to abuses of the process and outright coercion and, well, kidnapping in some cases by people working more or less with state welfare agencies. These stories were very much alive in the experiences of young people in the late 50s (yes, fifties) through 70s when so much good was done by progressive activists, professionals, and laypeople, especially in the social sciences in shaping policies and groups addressing these issues.

Anyway, one of the worst (and most colorful) examples from the few decades before the reform era was “Georgia Tann”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Tann

If you’ve never heard about her and that era, we’d suggest you learn about it, starting with Wikipedia and the books and links on that page.

When you’re done reading about her you’ll have some real insights into the many ways that adoption can be manipulated to take advantage of scared, poor young women (and impoverished communities who think that caring for those women and their children would have an unacceptably negative impact). You may also see parallels between the abuses of those days and the pressure that some young, poor women feel today who become pregnant unintentionally to (1) carry their pregnancy to term and (2) surrender the child after birth … and how “open adoption” can subtly pressure them into making that choice.

And you’ll also understand why and how open adoption / crypto-pro-life pieces like “Juno” make our f*cking skin crawl.

And after you’re done reading about “Georgia Tann” and thinking about “Juno”, go back and listen to “Little Green” off of “Blue”.

Trust us, it will help.

Just as we’re aware of this, the parents of the child in question are probably are of it. If the parents want to drop them off anyway, the kid’s better off without them. The unfitness of the parent correlates to the how bad of a situation they’re willing to leave their child.

It can be almost completely impossible to deal with, *especially* without massive amounts of money.

Maybe, uh, SINGLE PAYER universal health coverage would help deal with this, like so many other problems?

My mother grew up this way, in an orphanage with her brother (my uncle). This would have been in the late 40s or early 50s. My grandfather ran off and left my grandmother, and she couldn’t support the 2 kids, so she put them in an orphanage. She’d write them letters and visit when she could, but yes, they were treated as orphans even though both their parents were very much alive.

When my mother was in high school, she went to live with her grandmother.
My grandmother was ashamed that she had to “give up” her children- so much so that I only found out after her death. She wouldn’t let my mom tell me while she was alive so I wouldn’t think less of her.

Parents who left their children in orphanages could often visit their kids during the week and even sometimes take them home on weekends.

That said, every few days I see in the newspaper a man who killed his partner, kids, and then killed or tried to kill himself. There was one this week, a little boy named Nicky whose sisters watched him die after their dad stabbed him. The last time the Nebraska law was in the paper here, it was in the same edition as one of these cases. Women do the same thing to children, though they seem not to kill their partners – a few years ago we had a mother throw her children in the river after repeatedly seeking care for them. She threw herself in after them, but she was rescued. An adoptive mother tried to slit both her daughters throats here not so long ago. This is only going to get worse if the economy gets worse.

It should be a jumping-off point for social services and other services, not the end of the story. But that emergency outlet should be there, for kids of any age.

That’s totally unsupported… I posted a lot of information earlier that argues convincingly that there is just no proof that Safe Haven laws with anonymity have any affect at all on survival rates of the child OR mother.

Again, it sounds good, but there’s nothing backing it up, and a lot of negative side effects and nasty stuff attached to it. There are arguments that these laws increase the risk of the mother dying based on cases like the woman in Wisconsin I quoted above. It can’t be proven either way.

I think neonaticide can only ever “make sense” in conditions that just aren’t like that of the modern-day U.S.. Say, you are in a hunter-gatherer society that is going through an unexpected starvation period and have to make choices as to which children you can actually feed.

Otherwise, it’s profoundly irrational and goes against instinct… I don’t want to make a sexist appeal to “maternal instinct” here, I’m talking more about a more basic human inhibition against taking life.

I agree it’s really hard to target how to reduce it… but more research definitely needs to be done. The best start would be to track statistics of infant abandonment and neonaticide on a federal level, which is currently not being done.

@with compassion: that’s a really good comment, and it’s great to hear from someone who is so close to the issue and has some practical experience with it. There is a lot of ideological argument on the Nebraska Law (some I agree with, some I disagree, some I’m not sure) but ultimately what is going to work in the real world is most important.

The laws utilize pregnant womyn as nothing more than an expendable resource, the resultant kids as product for resale- often netting states federal ‘adoption bonueses’ for kids deemed “special needs” purely by nature of having been abandoned.

I’ll confess to not being informed enough about the issue to speak to the motivations of people who support the bill. And I won’t try to argue that Safe Haven laws fix everything and/or have no negative effects. But I don’t really know how they, on a large scale, encourage women to do the things that the women who are the targets of the laws are prepared to do anyway.

To clarify that last, convoluted sentence: What about the teenage girl who is already desperate to hide her pregnancy because of the reaction she’ll get (or she thinks she’ll get) at home? Whether or not a Safe Haven law exists, she’s likely to give birth in secret without medical care. The only difference is that now she has a safe place to put the baby rather than a dumpster.

What should we do instead? “Out” fearful mothers to a judgmental society and confine them to a hospital to give birth? Force or coerce them into abortions so that they don’t end up with a baby to abandon?

Repealing Safe Haven laws would likely have a similar effect to banning abortion. Women would continue doing the things they’ve done anyway, but now they’d have to do it in unsafe conditions that would endanger their health. The solution, as with abortion, isn’t to make that option illegal but to try to prevent the circumstances that would require that option.

Educate girls and women about birth control (and empower them to choose abstinence, if that’s what they want) and make birth control affordable and available to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Offer women affordable pre- and post-natal health care and publicize the fact that it’s available. Make adoption easier for the mother. Give pregnant women a place to go when their home situation makes them afraid to reveal their pregnancy. Work to reduce the stigma associated with teen pregnancy, unwed pregnancy, abortion, and adoption.

And if, despite all of the available resources, a pregnant woman should still want to give birth and abandon her child anonymously, give her a safe place to do it so that, even though the situation is far from ideal, the baby has a chance at some kind of a life.