Bill would provide safe haven for children of any age

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BY JoANNE YOUNG / Lincoln Journal Star

State senators advanced a much simplified safe haven bill Thursday that would allow a parent to leave a child with a hospital employee without prosecution.

An amendment to the original bill (LB157), offered by Omaha Sen. Pete Pirsch, would require the hospital to promptly contact appropriate authorities to take custody of the child.

The more complicated version, introduced by Sen. Arnie Stuthman of Platte Center, stalled two weeks ago because senators were concerned how a person would determine if an infant was younger than 72 hours old or 30 days old, as had been required.

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Other senators had been concerned about how the father’s rights would be protected — or even a mother who changed her mind — if parental rights were automatically terminated within a short period of time, either 48 hours or 30 days.

Pirsch said the simplified bill was a collaborative effort among many senators who wanted to see the bill pass this year.

The compromise amendment would put the decision on terminating parental rights in the hands of juvenile courts, where it belongs, Pirsch said.

Omaha Sen. Gwen Howard said Nebraska Department of Health and Human Service officials had a concern about whether the bill, without an age limitation, would open the door for a parent leaving an older child, say a teenager, at a hospital.

“The main concern is for the safety of the child,” Stuthman said.

Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, who has opposed the bill all along, and even filibustered it, said he “made a deal with the devil” on the compromise to “more or less get out of the way” of its passage.

“I don’t like society putting its stamp of approval on women abandoning their babies,” he said.

This society, he said during debate, is not respectful toward women in general. It is not nurturing, and casts terrible insulting slurs against them.

The bill does not deal with the underlying causes of child abandonment, he said.

“What is it in a society that will make a young woman feel so desperate that she can not hold on to what may be the most important thing in her life?” he said. “Those she should be able to turn to for sustenance and nurturing may be the ones who come down on her the hardest.”

Young women should be made to know that a baby is for life, he said. Society has the obligation to address these issues in such as way that she does not think automatically that the way out of a difficult situation is to throw her hands up and abandon her child, he said.

Those who say they are opposed to abortion have never done anything to address the underlying causes, he said.

Sen. Annette Dubas of Fullerton said she appreciated some of what Chambers said. She said she would take the bill as a personal challenge, and issue that challenge to her constituents and the state.

“This is about what we as a society offer as support,” she said, and what is offered to the child in terms of health care, quality education and jobs for his or her parents.

If the bill passes on final reading, Nebraska would be the 49th state with such a law, unless Alaska beats the state to it.

Alaska has passed a safe surrender bill that is awaiting its governor’s signature. Alaska’s bill would allow a parent to surrender a child up to 21 days old at hospitals, fire stations, police stations or to a doctor.

Nebraska’s bill became more urgent last year when three women abandoned their babies.

Last summer, a 21-year-old woman was charged in Lincoln with misdemeanor neglect of a child for leaving her newborn daughter, about 11 hours old, at Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center.

Omaha saw two cases of child abandonment, one at a hospital and one near a trash bin in an apartment complex.

Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.