There are groups who hope that laws like the Safe Haven Policy, also known as Safely Surrendered Baby Law or Child Abandonment Law, will someday come to Canada. The laws allow parents to literally give away their children anonymously and avoid prosecution.
The idea behind it is to prevent mothers from dangerously abandoning their children, or worse. The infant must be left in an approved location, including fire stations, and emergency rooms, and must be withing a certain age limit.
Such laws don't currently exist in Canada, should they? Since 1999, a total of 47 US states have adopted laws like this. Age limits range from state to state, and span from 3 days old to 1 year.
Some researchers criticize aspects of these laws for several reasons, including that they deprive biological fathers of their legal right to care for the child.
They also argue that it simply isn't doing any good, and that statistics show that since enacting these types of laws, all across the US cases of illegal abandonment have been on the rise.
For example, in all of the five years before North Carolina began allowing the surrender of infants, there were 10 known cases of babies who died after being illegally abandoned. After they developed the law in 2001 and up until '04, nine infants were illegally abandoned and died, while five or six were given up under the safe-haven law.
Opponents of safe-haven laws say it is statistics like these that prove the policies simply don't work and that they may even be increasing the numbers of children given away. They feel that these laws are persuading women who wouldn't normally have abandoned their babies to go ahead and do so.
Some who favor legal surrender of newborn babies are uncomfortable with certain aspects, such as the ever upping of the age limits. Members of the Los Angeles County board have lobbied for Schwarzenegger to leave California's current three-day age limit law as is, and to not go ahead and change it to the proposed 7 days.
Some feel that by forcing the parent/s to make the decision in the first 3 days of the child's life, it ensures that the infant gets the care and medical attention they need, while protecting the baby from abuse. One board member has been quoted saying, "If someone waits 30 days, there is no way to determine if that baby suffered any harm during that time."
Supporters of the time expansion argue "If the baby's being abused, don't we want to save that baby too?" They believe that parents should have the time to decide if they are fit. "The reality of raising a baby really dawns on you once you get it home."
Would you support such a law in Canada, should it go through?
Safe Haven Laws, Good Or Bad?
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29 comments:
i think it would be good..these mothers are obviously going to abandon their child anyways and hospital is a much better place to do it then someones front step in the dead of winter. i agree that the fathers should have the option but really if they were going to exercise their paternal right they probably would have been at the hospital with the newborn anwyays...
good point.
I think the focus needs to be on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies and education around adoption options. I don't think the policy would work, though it's a good policy in theory. Our hospitals are already so overcrowded and our health care workers stretched to their limits as it is without adding on these babies. We don't have the resources in place to properly care for these children until they are placed into foster or adoptive homes. Prevention and education is the key I think.
The babies don't actually STAY at the hospital, or the fire station, those sorts of places are simply deemed safe.
I know...but they still get checked out and most observed at least overnight and with foster homes being so few and far between here, they would likely stay in the hospital simply because there is no where for them to go right away.
i don't get it , are you saying that there should be nothing in place to protect these kids?
yup they would stay in the hospital our pediatrician was telling me one instance in manitoba there was an aboriginal child nobody would claim him and they couldn't place him since he is from federal land so he had to stay in the hospital he ended up passing away there....
No, I'm saying we don't have the proper resources in place right now for safe haven laws to work. We do'nt have enough health care resources or enough foster homes for these children...and like this article says, the policies don't work as well as they should and I think that the reasons I mentioned are partially why that is. It's great in theory, but it just doesn't work as well as it could. If we focused more on prevention, we wouldn't NEED safe haven laws.
I agree prevention and education is the key here, not a safe haven law. I guess i still believe what my mom always told me "if you think your mature enough to have unprotected sex, then you are mature enough to deal with the consequences." I understand their are some exceptions to this (rape, trauma etc) however whats wrong with adoption and placing the child in a loving environment.
I also agree at this time our health care has enough problems and coudl not handle the extra task of being a "safe" spot. I als o want to make it CLEAR that in NO way am i suggesting that it is ok to abandon a child im just simply saying it should never even come to that~
I feel very strongly that abortion should be abolished! It's murder. and I SOO agree with who ever said that if you can have sex, own up to your responsibilities!! People now can simply erase things that they don't like. It's discusting!
Oh please let's not make this into an abortion debate! No one said anything about abortion...
nobody did say anything about abortion... the point was educating people on preventing unwanted pregancies........
lol, sorry girls, i didn't mean to make it into an abortion debate. but i was just pointing out that i agree...
I think you who said that the hospitals would be so overwhelmed are failing to realize that, like was said in the article there were 9 babies in like 5 years. I am certain the hospital can handle that. Also, this would be spread all over the province so fredericton might get what like 2 babies in five years.
And just because now that the laws are in place in the states and more babies are being abandoned, that does not mean that it's not working! it could mean that less babies are being killed, or dying because they are not properly cared for and then buried in the back yard! God, didnt you all hear about that women who had dead babies hidden all in her yard and even under her sink!!
Why do we as a society want to prevent childbirth like it is some sort of disease?
over all i think its a great law and that it will save lives, and if the crappy american health care system can handle a baby being droped off now and then, i am SURE that the canadian system which is much better can!
i dont think the other poster meant preventing childbirths altogehter but preventing 'unwanted' pregnancies..which are obviously the ones who are abanding their children.
as for the hospitals have you been int he er waiting for a bed recently? lol hospitals are packed! there are no beds or room for people who are sick. let alone babies that are being abandoned means one more baby int he nursery or nicu which is already full with newborn babies and babies who are sick.
so what! there are LOTs of those little rollaway carts! I can't believe your insistence that a little baby who is not wanted should not be brought to the hospital. i'm sure they can handle an extra baby for one night until it is brought off to foster care. but you never know, maybe they aren't that competent.
What you fail to realize is that the problems with overwhelmed health care is NATION WIDE not just in Fredericton. And if the US can't handle it with their health care system which is MUCH better staffed than the Canadian one, we actually don't have a hope in hell of doing any better. But that aspect aside, once these babies are deemed healthy enough for permenant homes, the adoption process is so lengthy that they would need to go into foster care first and there aren't NEARLY enough foster homes as it is, let alone adding more infants to the system. Further more, the small number of infants you are using in your arguement is from ONE state of the 52 in the US...and that is only the known cases. I'm fairly certain there are many more that were not reported in that state...not to mention in all the other states.
Oh yeah there are lots of the cots so there's a place for the baby to be physically, the problem is that there isn't enough STAFF to look after the patient load properly AS IT IS without adding MORE patients to the load. Do you realize that the nursery in Fredericton hospital can accomodate around 20 infants and there is usually only 1 nurse on a night shift to look after 20 babies? That point aside...these babies wouldn't be in the nursery, they would either be in NICU or on the pediatric ward and to safely run NICU, there is 1 nurse to 2 babies max (usually it's 1 on 1) and there are barely enough nurses to do THAT.
i think the point of all of this was that there needs to be more in place than simply an agreement for people drop off there babies to a hospital wchi is understaffed and cities that have way too little foster homes.
Oh please! It's not a matter of nurse competency...it's SAFETY! Pulling statements like that out of your ass to stir up drama isn't adding anything to the converstation. If you had half a clue, you'd realize that no one can adequately care for 20 infants at one time and if you add in one or two that need 1 on 1 attention, it's physically impossible! You could be the most competent nurse on the face of the earth and still not be able to manage a patient load like that. Get real!
I've said it before, and I'll say it again...for this to work, you need MORE resources. You can't depend on resources that are already stretched waaaaay beyond what they should be to accomodate even more or else they're going to snap and the whole thing will go under and that's not going to help ANYONE! We need more hosptial resources, more foster care homes, more social workers and more adoptitve homes and THEN this just MIGHT work. I still say prevention of unwanted pregnancies would work far far better than having a safe place to dump your unwanted child.
my point is, youre acting like its gonna be a baby a day. it's once every blue moon!
and too, all i am saying is i think in comparison to the alternative, people killing and illegally disposing of their "unwanted" children, that bringing them to a hospital instead, overcrowded or not, is better!
Please realize that its not just unwated pregnancies that end up leaving their child. It does happen that someone realizes when its too late that they cannot handle being a mother and NEED someone to take over for them.
If the alternate it a mother killing her child, or leaving it on the side of the road so whatever/whoever finds it, then I would rather the nurses at the hospital work a little harder.
I cant believe that you guys are suggesting that the reason to not have this law is so the hospital doesnt get stuck with another unwanted patient.
just thought i'd throw in a thought or two , since i seemed to have totally missed the conversation lol ... If a baby were dropped off at the hospital, fire department , etc today would that baby be left uncared for ? i wouldn't say so , so if a woman who doesn't wish to keep her baby wants to dispose of it you would think that of the millions of places she could leave it ( river, garbage bin ,etc ) that a hospital , a fire department or for that matter a mall is already a safe haven ( anywhere that many ppl visit and the baby is sure to be found quickly) so for that fact i don't believe safe haven laws would work any better , it's obvious that prevention and education must be the key to saving these babies ...
candace, realize that these places are not only safe for the baby, but they are places that a mother can drop off her baby with out persecution. basically laws like this are in place to protect the mother's right to give her baby away..
oh yes i realize that but killing your child is also illegal , so i would hope that if the woman who dropped her baby off at a hospital, fire dep, etc is later found , would be given a slight upper ground than one who let her child die ...as a woman who dropped it off at a hospital etc never intended the child any harm ..i just think the law would be publicly saying "here drop your baby off nobody will care" and that if they didnt want their child, adoption is a much better option to promote
Definitely adoption is a better idea to promote! If you don't think you can keep your child, then the focus should be on finding a family who will care for that child rather than dumping him or her somewhere deemed safe and then skipping off scot free.
but again, my point that you are missing is that because they are giving these parents a chance to take the kid home and then decide (up t0 30 days in some places)it's much more than simply saying oh well you should put your kid up for adoption. That's a longer process than you think it is. I'm not saying they should just say here drop your kid off if it's too hard we will take care of her, but once again, it's better than someone harming a baby in my opinion
"i agree that the fathers should have the option but really if they were going to exercise their paternal right they probably would have been at the hospital with the newborn anwyays..."
im sorry but who ever said this sounds really naive..
if the mother isn't with the father, whether he wants to be there or not, she does not have to tell him when she is going in to labor, or has already had the baby if she doesn't want to.
Not to mention that most of these moms who dump their babies often give birth at home or at school...
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