Nebraska lawmakers recently fixed a flawed safe-haven law that had allowed parents to drop off any child under the age of 18 to state custody, no strings attached. What they couldn’t do was undo the damage they had caused.
Safe-haven laws are in place in all 50 states. The idea is to discourage infanticide and infants being abandoned in unsafe conditions. However, unlike the other 49 states that provided age limits, Nebraska lawmakers simply said “child,” which can be interpreted as anyone under the age of 18. The failure to specify an age limit led to a predictable outcome: Parents from all over the country took a ride to Nebraska and dropped off children they couldn’t, or didn’t want to, support.
Since the law took effect in September, 35 children had been dropped off at Nebraska hospitals. Of these 35, only six were under the age of 10 and none were infants. One girl, who later ran away from the hospital, was 17 years old. After seeing these results, Nebraska lawmakers quickly got together and changed the law to include only children less than 30 days old.
The children are certainly feeling the effects of the Nebraska’s mistake. Though an infant doesn’t understand the circumstances, these older children know when they’ve been abandoned. One social expressed concerned about the psychological wellbeing of the children, mentioning that many of them begged their parents not to leave them. A spokesperson for the governor noted that the emotional harm caused to these children is an “immediate concern.”
The failure of these government officials to predict this outcome is shocking. How did Nebraska make a mistake that the other 49 states had managed to avoid? The lawmakers had little to say, but blamed the mistake on their ignorance. “We didn’t think [the law] would be used to the extent it [has been],” Nebraska Sen. Brad Ashford said. “We didn’t anticipate children coming from other states.”
Nebraska Sen. Tom White stated that the lawmakers had been caught off guard by the number of teenagers being abandoned in his state.
What’s clear is that they gave a lot of troubled parents an easy way to stop taking care of their children. The Department of Health and Human Services did a study of 30 of the safe-haven cases. 27 of the children had received mental treatment, 28 of the children had single parents and 22 had a parent that had been in prison. “Do not judge me as a parent. I love my son, and my son knows that,” one parent said. These are parents in difficult situations. The Nebraska government gave them a chance to abandon their kids, and they used it.
And now there are 35 children without a real home. Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman had a plea for troubled parents: “Please don’t bring your teenager to Nebraska. Think of what you are saying. You are saying you no longer support them. You no longer love them.”
The Nebraska government can only thank themselves and the incompetence of their lawmakers for giving these parents the opportunity to jump through a simple loophole. It looks like the state government needed someone looking over their shoulder to check their work.
Alex Perla is a senior in finance. He can be reached at [email protected].
