Unintended Consequences - Nebraska's Safe Haven Law

plezWorld Post Artwork: Nicolas Poussin. Pharaoh's Daughter Finds Baby Moses. 1638. Oil on canvas. Louvre, Paris, France.

Wikipedia definies a "Safe Haven" Law, also known in some states as "Baby Moses" law, as the popular name for United States' laws that decriminalize leaving unharmed infants with statutorily designated private persons so that the child becomes a ward of the state. "Safe Haven" laws typically let parents remain nameless to the court, often using a numbered bracelet system as the only means of linking the baby to the mother.

Well, earlier this year, the state of Nebraska went one step further to extend their "safe haven" law to protect parents of children as old as 18 years of age! Parents can drop abandon their kids (and teens) at a hospital with no questions asked. Parents at their wits end are dumping their kids at Nebraska hospitals, many even crossing state lines to do so.

CNN.com reports that Nebraska's "safe haven" law, intended to allow parents to anonymously hand over an infant to a hospital without being prosecuted, isn't working out as planned. As of early October 2008, of the 17 children relinquished since the law took effect in July, only four are younger than 10 -- and all four are among the nine siblings abandoned by one man on September 24 at an Omaha hospital.

Over this past weekend, a 12-year-old boy was dropped off at Bryan Lincoln General Hospital East by his mother. The Lincoln Police Department said the boy's mother told police she was unable to discipline her son and dropped him off just before 10pm... she had driven to Lincoln, Nebraska from Smyrna, Georgia (over 1,000 miles away)! This boy is the 20th child to be dropped off under the Safe Haven law since the law went in effect this past July.

Gov. Dave Heineman laments the abuse of the law, "The few situations we've seen so far demonstrate the need for a change in Nebraska's safe haven law. In the coming legislative session, I will advocate for changes that put the focus back on protecting an infant in danger. That should be our priority."

All 50 states have safe haven laws, but only Nebraska's lacks an age limit. Most states let parents and guardians drop off children up to a month old at hospitals or other safe places. Sixteen states including Georgia have the 3-day-old age cap.

Nebraska's part-time Legislature is adjourned until January, but two state legislative committees will hold a joint hearing November 13 to discuss a remedy.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Channel 7 (KETV in Omaha) has a number of articles on kids dropped off under the "safe haven" law here and here and here.

Read the AJC.com article about the mother who drove from Georgia to Nebraska to dump her son.

Read the CNN.com article about unintended consequences of Nebraska's "safe haven" law.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

plez sez: wow! talk about abdicating one's parental responsibility! waiting 10 or 12 years before finding a state dumb enough to take your "mistake" off of your hands!

one dude dropped off NINE kids after his wife died! i wonder if those hellions played a part in her death?!?

...just asking.

and what about the lady who drove over 1,000 miles from georgia to be rid of her adolescent nightmare? it would serve her ass right if the nebraska authorities put his bad ass on a greyhound bus that met her in georgia a few hours after she got home!

something tells me that the lawmakers in nebraska were only planning on housing, feeding, and caring for the offspring of legal residents... and i know they had not planned on getting all of these kids who've already started growing body hair.

the nebraska legislature needs to fix this law QUICK! i cannot think of a state in the union that is equipped to handle the physical and mental turmoil that these kids must be going through to be abandoned by their parents as soon as it is legally possible for them to do so! how long would it be before parents just dropped their kids off on the state while they take a vacation in the caribbean? and then come back in a few weeks to claim custody... without fear of legal ramifications and without the financial cost feeding and housing a growing teenager!

hmmmm... that gives me an idea about a low cost alternative for my daughter when my wife and i go to Paris to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary!

Georgia's New Laws

Georgia has a part time legislature, they go to work in Atlanta in early January, and then pack up and go home by the end of March. Most of the bills that get passed by the Georgia State Legislature (Republican dominated House & Senate) and signed in to law by its Republican Governor take affect on July 1st.

What follows is a short list of changes as published by the AJC:

GUNS

Georgians with carry licenses will be able to tote concealed guns on public transportation, into restaurants that serve alcohol, the parking lot of their employer, and into state parks.


BOOZE

Georgians may buy wine over the Internet or by phone directly from wineries.

They also may take half-finished bottles of wine they ordered at restaurants home with them.

Wineries will be able to sell beer and wine in tasting rooms.

Limousine companies will be able to sell customers alcoholic beverages.


MONEY

A new $21 billion budget takes effect, with a 2.5 percent pay raise for about 200,000 state employees and teachers and $1 billion in construction projects.


CRIME

Penalties will go up for having or selling fake IDs.

It will be a felony to be caught driving without a license four or more times in five years, and the first conviction will require a minimum two-day jail sentence.

Jailers will have to check the nationality and legal status of those convicted of driving without a license.

It is illegal for sex offenders to photograph minors without parental consent. And sex offenders also will be prohibited from volunteering at churches.


SCHOOLS

Clayton County high school sophomores and juniors will be eligible for the HOPE scholarship even if their school system loses accreditation.
(This law will come in handy, since it appears that Clayton County Schools will loose accreditation in the Fall.)

Georgians wanting to start charter schools will be able to make their case to a state commission if they run into opposition from their local school board.


IMMIGRATION

Requires public employers, contractors and subcontractors with 100 employees or more to run new hires through the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify system to assure they are legally allowed to work in the United States.

plez sez: welcome to the wonderful state of georgia, where guns are allowed on MARTA buses and trains, and in restaurants that serve alcohol! i'm just wondering how long it will be before the fear and paranoia that would compel someone to carry a loaded gun with them into public will end in a serious injury or death? if you're that damned scared of other people, why don't you just stay home?!?

how long will it be before some trigger happy yahoo from Bumblefluck, Georgia feels intimidated on a MARTA train and decides to help the Atlanta Police with the crime problem that is a de rigour segment on the 6 o'clock news around here? how soon before two drunk patrons at a local watering hole decide to shoot it out over the waitress missing her two front teeth? how long before Atlanta's long heralded road rage turns deadly? and how long before some down-on-his-luck-and-mentally-ill homeless guy gets gunned down by a visitor to downtown Atlanta who felt "threatened" by a drunken panhandler?

i don't like guns in public and i've already had my rant about the SCOTUS 2nd amendment ruling from last week. i believe in a person's right to "bear arms" to protect home and property, but i'm leery about having that right extended to crowded public transportation or to establishments that contain individuals whose judgement may be impaired by alcohol. this Georgia gun law is a mistake.

"Letter from Birmingham Jail" Redux on MLK Jr Day

In April 1963 (only 45 years ago), a young Martin Luther King, Jr. (then only 34 years old) lead a march in Birmingham, Alabama for which he was jailed. While he sat in his jail cell, a group of clergymen sent him a letter which basically asked him why he brought his demonstrations to disrupt the peace of Birmingham.

Dr. King set pen to scraps of paper in his jail cell and wrote what plezWorld considers to be the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence -- all rolled into one -- of the Civil Rights Movement, as a reply to the clergymen's letter.

It is interesting to note that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson alittle over a year later, thanks in large measure to the efforts of one Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As we pause to celebrate the life of the Greatest American, tarry a few minutes in plezWorld and read Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. This letter is not as widely publicized and distributed as the "I Have A Dream" or "I've Been To The Mountaintop" speeches, but this letter lays out the entire rationale and strategy of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King's stunning prose, and his grasp of psychology and human history while being confined to a jail cell is mind boggling. Excerpts of the letter follows:

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century BC left their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you no forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" -- then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may won ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Read or download the pdf version of the entire Letter from Birmingham here.

Access the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" website to get a thorough explanation of the letter and its structure.


plez sez: Happy Birthday, Dr. King (January 15, 1929 - April 3, 1968)!