Child Maltreatment

 

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Child Maltreatment, Vol. 13, No. 1, 98-100 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1077559507310368

Comment: Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute Response

Adam Pertman

Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, New York, apertman{at}adoptioninstitute.org

Georgia Deoudes

Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, New York

It has been 8 years since Texas became the first state in the country to address the discarding of newborns in public places by legalizing anonymous infant abandonment. The central question in the debate over the efficacy of Safe Haven laws remains whether they are succeeding in their stated objective, that is, to reduce the number of unsafe, illegal newborn abandonments. The lack of official recordkeeping makes it difficult to assess the effectiveness of the law in Texas, or elsewhere in the United States. Furthermore, because the law protects the anonymity of the abandoning adult and does not require any collection of information from or counseling of that adult, there is no way to determine whether people abandoning infants at Safe Havens are those who would have abandoned unsafely in the absence of the law. In addition to the law's dubious effectiveness, it evidently causes multiple troublesome, unintended consequences.

Key Words: infant abandonment • Safe Haven laws


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