If someone asked me two days ago what “Safe Surrender” was, I would have said,  ” I saw that in a war flick the other night, the guy carried a white flag across the battlefield to surrender.” 

What kind of idiot would I have looked like?  How many people reading this know what “Safe Surrender” is?  

Since I won’t get an answer and wouldn’t expect to, I certainly won’t ask how many people reading this have taken advantage of “Safe Surrender”. I am very embarrassed on two levels in not knowing what it is. The first is that I am an attorney so you would think I would know. Secondly, Texas was the very first state to pass “Safe Surrender” Legislation. 

For those who don’t know “Safe Surrender” is a law which allows a mother of a newborn baby to basically drop that baby off within a certain time period after birth at an approved emergency station (firehouse, certain types of hospitals) and face no criminal liability for abandoning her child. This law generally does NOT apply to fathers. Is this a good or a bad thing? There are a lot of arguments on both sides.

There are no hard stats on safe surrender or abandoned babies in general other than related to HIV abandonment. It is estimated that approximately 20,000 babies of drug addicted or HIV positive women are abandoned every year. As of the writing of this blog, 47 states have “safe surrender” legislation in place which allows the mother to drop her newborn off with a designated third party and for all intensively purposes, walk away back into her now “baby free” life. Good or bad?

Texas was the very first state to pass safe surrender legislation in 1999. (The Baby Moses Laws) It was passed “knee jerk” in response to a wave of baby abandonments occurring in the Houston area the year before. Well it could not have been too knee jerk. Look at all the states that followed suit.

Individuals usually make decisions to abandon newborns in part out of fear that others will discover the pregnancy. In response to this fear, safe haven laws are designed to explicitly or implicitly provide an anonymous way for parents to relinquish their babies. Only two states require havens to actively seek the identity of the babies’ parents, and 12 states specifically provide anonymity.

Experience has also shown that individuals usually make decisions spontaneously and in situations of crisis soon after the birth of an unexpected or unintended baby. As a result, state laws usually restrict the age of babies that individuals can legally relinquish. The most commonly designated lapse of time between birth and surrender is 72 hours.

Protection for parents who surrender their babies is another obvious

The American Civil Liberties Union has come out in favor of safe surrender in that these laws do not infringe on a women’s basic right to reproduce. They did have this to say however:

“In general, we support the concept of safe surrender, but we have several words of caution. First, these laws provide an after-the-fact safety net, not a solution to the problems of unintended pregnancy or inability to care for a child. Virtually every case of infant abandonment signals that the health care and social service system has failed a woman and her baby, for surely a well-functioning system would enable a woman either to prevent unwanted pregnancy, to end it safely and early, or, if she decided to carry to term, either to keep her child or to place it, again safely and swiftly, for adoption. Moreover, it is not clear whether safe surrender laws will accomplish their purpose. No infants were surrendered under Texas’s law until December 2000, 17 months after the law’s enactment. And, since the law took effect, 13 infants in Texas have been illegally abandoned.”

I am amazed that for once I find myself in agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union. I have been often critical of them in taking a position of “being right for the sake of being right” without regards to the consequences and the overall effect on those affected by whatever issue they are challenging.

While I morally view safe surrender as a cop out to parental responsibility and just another way for people to throw their problems on to the state but I also am pragmatic about it. I would rather the state bear the cost of hopefully helping a child be raised in a better adoptive environment than see that child raised into the same life of irresponsibility that its mother (and father if applicable) showed in abandoning it. If they would abandon their child to total strangers, doesn’t that indicate the type of life that child would have if no safe surrender was available? 

Does this law promote sexual irresponsibility? Don’t know, can’t find any stats. I doubt it. I also doubt you will see any analogies on the level you are seeing of the “morning after pill” or the proposed mandatory HPV vaccination.

One thing that bothers me as an attorney, is what about the father? I have a real problem with a mother being able to unilaterally terminate a father’s parental rights but I think most statutes would address this issue and even if not…..  better a searching father than a baby in the dumpster……………. I believe Safe Surrender is a good