Another Voice / ‘Safe haven’ laws
System to protect children tramples fathers’ rights
Updated: 10/09/08 6:59 AM
A2-week-old baby girl recently was found in a pile of trash in a Chicago suburb; this, despite the fact that Illinois has a “safe haven” law. Nearly every state in America has a “safe haven” law that allows mothers to abandon their children at designated hospitals, fire stations or police stations and just walk away from their responsibilities as a parent.
There are no legal ramifications or accountability for the mother and few, if any, questions asked — most importantly, where is the child’s father? With the built-in anonymity of “safe haven” laws, there is little chance the father will be contacted so that he can pursue custody and care for his child and be afforded due process and equal protection under the U. S. Constitution.
“Safe haven” laws were passed to protect infants who are literally being thrown into dumpsters and garbage cans and left to die. However, statistics have shown that mothers are still disposing of their infants in this terrible way, as with the baby found in Chicago.
Each “safe haven” law has its own language. Some states give mothers 30 days to abandon their children and others, such as Nebraska, give no age definition of a minor child. A man in Nebraska recently dropped nine of his 10 children off at a hospital; they ranged from ages 1 to 17, all of them fitting the legal definition of a minor child.
This rare occurrence of a father abandoning his children under a “safe haven” law only complicates the problems with the law itself. Perhaps the most powerful argument against “safe haven” laws is that they enable children to be thought of as throwaway trash.
The irony in the “safe haven” laws lies with continued gender bias that surrounds the rights of fathers. When a father chooses to opt out of parenthood and just walk away, he becomes a “deadbeat dad” or worse, he goes to jail for failing to live up to his financial responsibilities. Yet when a mother decides that she will not take care of her child, she is given anywhere from 78 hours to 18 years, in some states, to “safely” abandon her child.
Unlike a traditional adoption, the father does not have to be notified, does not have to legally relinquish his parental rights and the child is denied a chance to grow up with dad or members of his biological family.
Children who are abandoned in such a way are denied the right to know their medical history, a consequence that can be life-threatening.
While the “safe haven” laws were born out of good intentions, the problems that they have created outweigh the benefits, especially when mothers continue to abandon their children in dangerous and life-threatening ways.
Fathers cannot be kicked to the curb while their constitutional rights are trampled upon. “Safe haven” laws need to be re-engineered to protect children, who would otherwise meet certain death, and to protect their fathers, who have a right to know that their children exist and are about to be abandoned.
Jeffery M. Leving is an attorney and fathers’ rights advocate.
