The Minnesota Safe Place for Newborns Act allows people to leave babies at hospitals without being questioned or prosecuted for a crime. Since the law took effect in 2000, 12 babies have been dropped off at hospitals around the state. The Pioneer Press is reporting that a hospital in Maplewood violated the law by calling the police on a woman after she left a 3-hour-old child in their care. Despite having the woman’s name and phone number, the police will not press charges.
No Questions Asked?
Jun 27 2006 — 2:00am
17 Reader Comments
1:29 am
I’m not sure if there’s much to discuss in this story. Do you think that woman would like to turn back time and make a different decision, never knowing the sort of debacle awaited her?
7:48 am
“The wonderful thing is, it’s a learning tool, and no one has been harmed,” Feinwachs said.
Yeah! An hours old baby is abandoned by it’s mother, (instead of being thrown into a dumpster, I gather), and the mother was only inconvenienced, (instead of mistakenly arrested), when the hospital staff, (who are somehow supposed to determine if the person abandoning a baby really is the mother, and are paradoxically at the same time obligated by law to call authorities if they suspect abuse of a woman or child).
“Wonderful thing” and “learning tool” are NOT the phrases that immediately spring to my mind.
8:08 am
I think this is a great law. In the interest of disclosure, I was on the periphery of attempts to modify it this year including extending the safe haven time period and expanding options for mothers in rural areas. It’s really aimed at mothers who had their pregnancy in secret (it happens) or some other bad situation. We certainly wish mothers would keep and raise their own children, but having the safe havens law gives them a better option than something horrible.
9:03 am
kwatt: now I really don’t know what kind of work you’re in.
9:27 am
It’s obvious — Kevin is a merchant in the flesh trade.
9:30 am
Debate about whether or not the law is a good thing is something that should have happened when our representatives were discussing it. If you have concerns about a law–take it out on the people you vote for, not the woman who was following the law. The legislature is the one who decided she had the right to do this, morally wrong or not.
She did what she was legally allowed to do — she had a legal right to take a child she couldn’t handle, somewhere safe to someone who could. She was caring and responsible enough to leave a child in a safe place. The real focus should not be on whether the mother did the “right” thing, or whether the law is “wonderful” rather, or if the situation is “wonderful”, the focus should be kept on the fact that the baby received proper medical care, clothing, and housing, and now will be in the hands of someone who can take care of it in the way every child deserves, whatever the reason is that the mother chose to leave it. All children should have that option. The mother gave her child a chance to not live its life in the same position in life that she is in right now. The child has a life of opportunity ahead, rather than a life of misery. If only every child born into a bad situation was treated with the same respect.
9:49 am
Look ladies, who needs abortions when you can just give the kid away!
nevermind all the issues of bringing it to term, you don’t have to keep it once you give birth!
uhm…
9:52 am
I saw a program on one of the evening news magazine shows about this very topic earlier this year. They were interviewing the fire chief (police chief?) that started this program. They also talked to a woman who was in her early 20’s and in jail for killing her newborn in the college bathroom. No one knew she was pregnant. She is now serving 5-7 years and will have to live with the thought that she killed her newborn baby for the rest of her life. If a program like this can save mothers and babies its worth it.
10:19 am
Notwithstanding my snark, upthread, I agree this is probably a good program. It’s a logical solution to a tragically illogical problem; I hope it works.
10:42 am
I love this law….is there a statute of limitations on this? For instance, can I take my 4-year-old son back to North Memorial and leave him next time he has a temper tantrum? How about my 2 year-old daughter when she bites my shoulder?
10:51 am
Um, no. I believe it’s maybe 3 days now. There were efforts this year to make it 7.
11:24 am
In some ways, the law seems counterintuitive, but just try holding anyone’s newborn, let alone your own, for about five seconds — then imagine giving it up. I had that experience just the other day… with a baby born at the same hosptial…
The fact that it happens so rarely says so much about the difficulty of making that decision.
12:22 pm
And really not many people even know the law is there.
1:01 pm
That has to be a painful decision. But is a way for a woman with few other options to do what’s best for the baby. Hopefully the publicity will get all area hospitals on board with the correct interpretation of the law.
10:26 pm
Wouldn’t the mother’s friends and family kinda wonder about the fact that she was pregnant and then at the end of 9 months didn’t have a baby?
Though I guess in these kinds of circumstances, the mom shouldn’t really care what the friends and family think and just do what is best for the baby.
Does anyone know what the hospital does with the baby once they receive it?
11:48 pm
I tend to think that if the mother had a supportive family or network of real friends who would notice the absence of a baby, she probably wouldn’t have been in the position of needing to leave it at the hospital in the first place. I also know of a program where people can volunteer to take a baby into their home to take care of it until the social system can either find a long-term official foster placement or adoptive parents…that is where most hospitals place the children after recieving them.
I also find it interesting that – again with the moral standpoint – we’re pointing fingers at the mother “abandoning” her baby…when fathers do this all the time. Do the hospitals call the cops on the dads who never show up after their baby momma gives birth?
10:21 pm
The problems with this law, and others like it, are many. The most flagrant is that it assumes the women who kill or abandon their children to die are capable of acting rationally or give a rip about their children in the first place. A pretty dubious propostion, IMO.
Our legisators simply hopped on a bus they thought was a no-lose proposition, politically, instead of even trying to identify and address the circumstances that give rise to infanticide. This was easy, cheap, and something to brag about come election time.
We’ll never know whether Safe Haven laws save a single life. But every time we read of an infant killed or left to die, we will know the laws failed.