Institute Debunks Donaldson Report on Safe Haven Laws

Counter Report: A Discovery Institute Rebuke of New York City Adoption Institute Report on Safe Havens

Five minimal provisions that should be in any Safe Haven statute

Suggestion # 1. "Ensure that only people with explicit permission and legal rights are leaving a child."

Fact # 1. As Donaldson knows, ensuring that a person leaving a child at a designated Safe Haven or with an approved person would require something like showing identification and providing written verification that the mother of the child has deputized that person to use the Safe Haven relinquishment procedures. Removing anonymity in such a fashion would make Safe Haven laws unlikely to pass state legislatures and very unlikely to be utilized by persons desiring anonymity.

Suggestion # 2. "Offer counseling and post-natal care to women who bring infants to designated sites and provide information to them about their options, including parenting by family members and adoption through established legal procedures."

Fact # 2. Supporters of sound Safe Haven laws already are recommending this approach and have in fact written such procedures into the laws enacted by some states.

Suggestion # 3. "Require that strong efforts be made to obtain information about the child, including basic medical and genetic family histories, along with contact information for emergency use."

Fact # 3. Already, Safe Haven supporters have been successful in getting some states to incorporate ways of providing basic medical and genetic family history information. However, providing "contact information" would require trusting state bureaucrats with confidential, identifying information, and as a recent situation in Florida where more than 14,000 people who adopted were contacted by a researcher without proper permission having been granted proves, bureaucrats cannot be trusted to keep confidential information private.

Suggestion # 4. "Create mechanisms for notifying birth fathers about abandonments and provide opportunities for them to assert their legal rights."

Fact # 4. Safe Haven advocates support the use of, or are seeking to enact, laws creating Putative Father Registries so that men who may believe that their offspring have been relinquished under Safe Haven procedures can have their day in court. As for notifying birth fathers, the experience with the so-called "Scarlet Letter law" in Florida, a law which has been challenged and which is being rewritten by the legislature, shows that such approaches deny women basic rights in choosing how to make plans regarding their pregnancies.

Suggestion # 5. "Allow birth parents to regain custody of their infants within a specified time period and, if they do not, quickly terminate parental rights so that adoption can be expedited."

Fact # 5.This has been the policy of Safe Haven advocates ever since the first law, the Baby Moses law, was passed in Texas in 1999.

Conclusion

The Donaldson report makes 16 claims, recommendations or suggestions. In each and every instance, the comments are either something that Safe Haven laws provide or that Safe Haven advocates support, or the ideas contradict the very idea of anonymous relinquishments. In several instances, Donaldson is either unaware of or chose not to include in its report positive activities taking place under the leadership of the AMT Children of Hope Foundation and Tim Jaccard in New York City, where Donaldson is located.

The Donaldson report contains nothing new that is workable and studiously ignores the positive results that have flowed from Safe Haven laws. Such a report is neither sound research nor acceptable journalism.

Page 1: Background
Page 2: Unintended Consequences?
Page 3: Missing Elements?
Page 4: Minimal Provisions?

© 2003 by William L. Pierce. All rights reserved.

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Related Resources
•Donaldson Study Shows 'Safe Havens' Cause, Don't Solve Problems
•Marley Greiner: A Few Bastardly Thoughts
•Safe Haven Laws & Programs in the U.S.

Elsewhere on the Web
•Bastard Nation
•Discovery Institute
•Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

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