Since , all US states and the District of Columbia, have safe haven baby abandonment laws. They may state age limited which may not be enforced. See our section of the abandonment of teens in the US.
In recent years, most states in the U. This report, written by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and published in , questions the efficacy of the laws and makes recommendations for alternative methods of preventing abandonments. Background Forty-two states have enacted "safe haven" laws since These laws are intended to allow parents to leave their newborns at designated safe places, including hospitals and police stations, while guaranteeing those parents anonymity and freedom from prosecution.
As an example, Arizona's law states that a person may anonymously leave an unharmed newborn infant who is seventy-two hours old or younger with a designated safe haven provider such as a firefighter who is on duty without answering any questions and such person is not guilty of child abuse Arizona Revised Statute Section This report:. Donaldson Adoption Institute, is sharply critical of the manner in which states enacted safe haven laws without first conducting research to determine the causes of abandonment Davidson, Safe haven laws presuppose that women will not unsafely abandon their infants if they are guaranteed anonymity and freedom from prosecution.
The abandonment laws attempt to respond to this. But if-as the author suggests-- women in fact abandon their infants because they are acting out of panic and are plagued by denial and desperation, abandonment laws fail to address the actual problem. The author cites social science research on women who commit neonaticide the murder of newborns on their first day of life, including abandonments that result in death to support her assertion that mothers who abandon their infants are often young women who hide their pregnancies and are in such a state of denial that they are unable to respond thoughtfully to the pregnancy Meyer, C.
The author contends that this class of women would lack the clarity of thought to seek out a safe haven site and that these laws, therefore, do little to prevent women from abandoning infants. Lack of Accurate Information Concerning Effectiveness The author points out that few, if any, states are engaged in data collection which would permit an evaluation of the effectiveness of the safe haven laws in preventing unsafe abandonments.
