On Saturday morning, Tim Jaccard attended the funerals of two babies — Nicholas Hope and Thomas Hope — at St. William the Abbott church in Seaford, N.Y.

On Sunday he flew into Lincoln, and Monday afternoon he will testify at a 1:30 public hearing at the Capitol on amending Nebraska's safe haven law.

The day has come for state senators to hear what Nebraskans and others have to say about the state’s safe haven law.

Two bills have been introduced in the special session — one to limit the law to newborns up to 3 days old and one to change the age limit to 1 year old and younger and add a provision to address mental and behavioral health services for older children. 

 Jaccard, a Nassau County, N.Y. medical technician and president of AMT Children of Hope, will be among many expected to add their voices to the debate.

Jaccard has advocated for safe haven laws for 10 years, and for help for mothers who are in danger of dumping their newborns out of fear or desperation. He runs the Children of Hope crisis center and foundation.

The foundation has helped give many babies a dignified funeral after they were killed or left to die by their mothers.

Nicholas’ 17-year-old mother, who was in this country illegally and didn’t speak English, gave birth to him Oct. 4 in an apartment in the Bronx. She is charged with strangling him shortly after his birth.

Thomas was a stillborn preserved in a jar of formaldehyde 32 years and used for teaching students.

About 100 mourners came Saturday to honor the babies and grieve for the memories that would never come to be: the first smile, the first steps, the first day of school, said Monsignor Bill Koenig, who eulogized the babies.

“This will strengthen our resolve to make the world a better place to welcome children,” he said. 

Both infants were buried in white baptismal gowns given by Jaccard’s foundation. They joined 84 other babies buried in Holy Rood Cemetery. Most of the babies in that small section of the cemetery had been left to die after their births.

“Finally, now they will have peace of mind and rest,” Jaccard said.

Jaccard’s foundation gives all the babies the last name Hope. The funerals help bring attention to the safe haven issue.

“Every one of them saved another child’s life,” Jaccard said Friday in a telephone interview.

The advocate has been consulting with Nebraska state senators on an infants safe-haven bill since 2006, he said.

This year, Nebraska became the last state to pass such a law, but without an age limit. Since it went into effect July 18, no infants have been legally abandoned using the law. But since September, 34 older children, the majority of them teenagers, have been left at Nebraska hospitals by desperate parents or guardians.

As it is, Jaccard said, Nebraska’s law isn’t a true safe haven law, but rather a child protection bill.

Now that the Legislature is in special session to put an age limit in place and focus the bill on infants as its sponsor, Sen. Arnie Stuthman of Platte Center intended, Jaccard has come to Lincoln to offer his expertise on saving babies whose mothers want to abandon them.

The crisis center he founded in 1998 guides mothers across the country to safe locations to deliver their babies and to relinquish them. When the mothers agree, Jaccard said, they help put them up for adoption.

Last year, the Children of Hope hotline received 2,521 calls.

Jaccard’s mission began in 1998 when as a medical officer with the Nassau County Police Department he responded to a call of a baby not breathing at the courthouse in Hempstead. When he got there he found a 6-pound, 4-ounce baby boy drowned in a toilet.

No one had seen the mother go into the bathroom, give birth, and then disappear in to the crowd, he said.

The awful event repeated three times in the next six weeks. A baby found suffocated with a plastic bag. A newborn unearthed in a backyard. One found in a recycling bin.

He learned the same thing was going on in countless cities across the country: 41 babies in three cities alone in 10  months.

At that time in New York, if a mother tried to give up her baby at a hospital, she was charged with felony abandonment and faced four years in prison, he said. She was listed as a child abuser, and her future parental rights jeopardized.

Now, New York allows mothers to abandon their babies with any responsible person, like a  mother in Buffalo, N.Y., who recently walked to a nearby 7-11 and handed her baby to a clerk. The nearest hospital was 37 miles away and the nearest fire station 18 miles away.

Volunteers at Jaccard's crisis center try to get mothers to hospitals. When they can’t, the medical technician has helped deliver babies  in parks, diners and once on a rock.

At the hearing, Jaccard will stress how important a safe haven bill for infants is in Nebraska.

He hopes senators will change the law to have an age limit of 30 days, rather than 3 days as proposed.

More than 1,300 infants have been legally abandoned in the United States since Texas passed the first safe haven bill in 1999. Jaccard  hopes someday for a national law that covers all states equally.

He’d also like all states, including Nebraska, to use the national safe haven logo, a baby resting in an open hand. In New York,  2-foot by 2-foot signs are placed below hospital logos near highway exits.

The logo is also placed in bus terminals, emergency rooms, and on ambulances, and emergency response cars.

“The bill is worth nothing unless the public is aware of it,” Jaccard said.  

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