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'Safe haven' law could save young lives
'Safe haven' law can save new lives
Date published: 7/21/2006 By NATASHA ALTAMIRANO By NATASHA ALTAMIRANO The recent death of a baby born to a Stafford County teen has prompted adoption advocates to push for wider public knowledge of a three-year-old "safe haven" law. Adoption and family-planning agencies hope to raise awareness of the state law, which protects from prosecution parents who leave a newborn up to 14 days old at a 24-hour hospital or rescue station. The parent must deliver the child to medical or rescue personnel "in a manner reasonably calculated to ensure the child's safety," the law states. In Stafford County, a teen mother is charged with first-degree murder and felony murder and will be tried as an adult. Fifteen-year-old Brittany Robinson was charged after her dead newborn daughter was found in an abandoned car in early April. "There needs to be a way to let women who are desperate know that if they're not prepared to take care of the child, someone is," said Joan Richwine, director of Bethany Christian Services' Fredericksburg office. The national adoption agency provides counseling, prenatal care, medical referrals and baby items. The Fredericksburg area has had at least two other baby abandonment cases in the past few years. Fredericksburg resident Anabelis Corrales was convicted of second-degree murder in the January 2001 slaying of her newborn daughter. Corrales was sentenced to a five-year prison term in October 2001 for wrapping her newborn in trash bags and leaving the infant in a closet. In October 2004, a newborn boy was abandoned on a North Stafford doorstep and later placed in foster care. Even cases that don't end in the baby's death are unacceptable, said Kathleen Mahoney, newsletter editor of the nonprofit organization Birthright of Fredericksburg. "One time is one time too many," Mahoney said of abandonment cases. "It's such a tragedy to read these accounts in the newspaper--to learn about babies abandoned in Dumpsters or gas stations." The organization is not an adoption agency, but it provides crisis pregnancy counseling, pregnancy tests and referrals to adoption agencies. Forty-six states had passed "safe haven" laws as of November 2004, according to the latest data from the Child Welfare Information Gateway. Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska, Vermont and the District of Columbia have not, according to the Health and Human Services agency.
Date published: 7/21/2006
quote
(posted by
PYTHON37
, Sep. 25, 2007 2:41 pm)
"There needs to be a way to let women know if they're not prepared to take care of the child, don't get pregnant in the first place." - Me
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