Neb. safe-haven fix blocks parents from leaving teens
The revision covers children up to 30 days old and reflects lawmakers' original intent to protect newborns.
By Nate Jenkins
The Associated Press
Updated: 11/21/2008 10:34:39 PM MST
LINCOLN, Neb. — Gov. Dave Heineman signed into law Friday a bill adding a 30-day age limit to a safe-haven law that allowed 35 children — including teenagers as old as 17 — to be abandoned at state hospitals.
The law, approved hours earlier by the Legislature in a 45-3 vote, was to go into effect Saturday and makes Nebraska the 14th state with a 30-day age cap. It had been the only state with a safe-haven law without an age limit.
"I think this solves the immediate problem of adolescents being abandoned," said state Sen. Kent Rogert. "These kids are old enough to know they're being dropped off, and that's not good."
The law was meant to prevent newborns from being dumped in trash bins or worse.
But it has been used to abandon 35 children at state hospitals since July — many of them preteens or teenagers as old as 17.
Hospital officials have described children crying hysterically as they pleaded with their parents not to leave them.
Five of the children have been from other states, including from as far away as Florida and Michigan. The law was not revised to preclude infants from other states from being dropped off.
Heineman said the age limit should keep Nebraska from becoming a dumping ground for children from out of state and will refocus the law on lawmakers' original intent: to protect newborns.
Parents and guardians who have dropped off the kids have said they have done so because they thought they had nowhere else to turn.
None of the children dropped off was an infant, a point some child-welfare advocates and others have said shows of a lack of public services to help troubled older youths.
Lawmakers have vowed to address the issue during the regular legislative session, which convenes in January, and have formed a task force to forge recommendations.
State officials deny there is a lack of services and have said some of the children were unnecessarily abandoned.
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