Common Sense Political Thought

Our good friend Donald Douglas, the political science professor who runs the American Power blog, has an interesting, if saddening, article on his site, one with which I’m afraid I have to disagree. It concerns a mother from Detroit, who drove for twelve hours to abandon her 13 year-old son at a “safe-haven” hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.

Nebraska’s safe-haven law is unlike similar laws in that it allows anyone, not just a parent, to drop off a child, of any age, at any state-licensed hospital without fear of prosecution for abandonment. The law doesn’t absolve anyone of other charges like abuse or neglect.

I’m not certain how the “anyone, not just a parent” part works, but that’s not at issue here. Most states which have such safe haven laws have written them to apply to newborns, to prevent things like the Grossberg-Peterson case, where teenaged parents who did not want to be parents simply delivered their baby in secret and then murdered him.

Todd Landry, who heads the state’s Department of Health and Human Services’ division of children and family services, said that a new law is needed to specifically address infants in danger, and that two children coming from out of state is clear evidence changes are needed.

Why? The original intent if the law was to protect newborns, no doubt about that. But as I noted earlier today, it isn’t just newborns in danger of being abandoned. Donyea Phillips was essentially abandoned, allowed to runaway from whatever passed as a home for him, to live as a squatter in a crack house in the East Frankford section of the City of Brotherly Love, and now, because of the life he led, he’s going to spend the next 25-to-50 years in the state penitentiary.

Mr Phillips’ parents weren’t much. His father was in court for the sentencing hearing, but when Mr Phillips’ attorney brought in a psychologist, to testify on behalf of Mr Phillips, hoping for some leniency in his sentence, the father got up and walked out when the psychologist testified that Mr Phillips didn’t have a very good home life because of the examples of violence set by his father.

What if Mr Phillips’ mother had been able to drop him off at Temple University Hospital when he needed help and his family simply couldn’t keep him any more? It might have been too late, of course, and he might still have turned into a thug, but maybe, just maybe, he would have turned out differently.

Dr Douglas quoted Governor Dave Heineman (R-NE), who issued a press release saying:

Abandonment of an older child is potentially very devastating. Human services professionals have highlighted the difference in giving up a baby who will grow up knowing their birth family wanted a better life for them versus the impact of a parent giving up on an older child.

Nebraskans believe strongly in parental responsibility. The essential element defining any family is the knowledge that parents provide unconditional love for their children.

Dr Douglas seems to believe exactly that, as I do. But the plain truth is that not every parent provides unconditional love for his children. We have various departments in every state to intervene and care for children who are being neglected or abused. They don’t always succeed, and I have written previously about Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter’s reaction to one particularly spectacular failure in the city’s Department of Human Services, but they exist precisely because not every parent provides the unconditional love and support his children need.

This touches me, personally, because my wife is a pediatric nurse, and I hear the stories about neglected and abused children that she sees — and since she works in a hospital, the cases tend to be extreme, or she wouldn’t see them — and I hear about her having to deal with Children and Youth, about her having to report cases to the authorities when she reasonably suspects child abuse; as a registered nurse, she is required, by law, to report such cases.

This is an issue on which I disagree with my fellow conservatives. Ed Morrissey wrote:

When Nebraska passed a law that allowed panicked mothers to abandon their babies at hospitals with immunity from prosecution, many hailed it as a breakthrough in helping to keep unwanted infants alive. Now it looks more like a poster child for bad legislation.

No, it looks to me like a poster child for good legislation. Families in every state can get help, if they go to the right offices, if they fill out the bureaucratic paperwork, and if they, quite frankly, set themselves up to be investigated criminally. What Nebraska’s law does is to provide a way out, a way for parents to surrender their children to someone who will care for them without running afoul of the law. Given that parents are coming from out of state to take advantage of this, when help is available in every state, it becomes clear that the provision of the Nebraska law which enables parents to do this without fearing the law is needed.

To me, it comes down to a simple question: is it more important to be able to prosecute the parents, or to save the children’s lives?

Yeah, I wish that all parents could and would do the right thing: love and support their children, and rear them properly. I grew up in a very poor household, and know that you don’t have to be wealthy or middle-class to be reared properly or loved by your parents. But not all parents are like my mother, not all parents are the way be believe they ought to be. Unlike Mr Morrissey and unlike Dr Douglas, I think that this is a good law Nebraska has, and it should be copied by the other states, not tightened up in the one.

Dr Douglas began his article by saying that he was “frankly blown away” by the story; from some of the things I’ve heard from my wife, I’m happy that it wound up this good.