Nebraska officials said they're concerned about an apparent rush by parents to drop their teenage children off at hospitals before lawmakers change the state's troubled "safe haven" law.
"Please don't bring your teenager to Nebraska," Gov. Dave Heineman told CNN. "Think of what you are saying. You are saying you no longer support them. You no longer love them."
Nebraska's safe haven law was intended to allow parents to hand over an infant anonymously to a hospital without being prosecuted. Of the 34 children who have been dropped off at hospitals, officials said not one has been an infant. All but six have been older than 10, according to a Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services analysis.
Would they rather parents abuse these children or drop them off at the hospital under "safe haven"?
Or, maybe everyone would just rather these kids become an heroes. MySpace accounts, anyone?
"Please don't bring your teenager to Nebraska,"
Yeah, because these children are obviously better off in their current situation.
Whenever I hear people freaking out about this, the numbers they quote of people being dropped off always seems incredibly small.
The problem is, why should Nebraska be financially responsible for the whole country's unwanted teenagers? unless... unless they got federal funding to run the unwanted teenagers program for the whole US. They're geographically kinda in the middle of everything -- it's so crazy it just might work!
There would be public service ads on TV informing parents of the option, and it would be a genuine deterrent for juvenile delinquency (one hopes.)
For the same short-sighted reason SF was the dump for homeless from across the country: SF had the highest cash payments of almost any municipality until Newsom/BoS changed it to a food/lodging voucher system.
My point exactly, that's why they have to change it.
Oh, I meant to be replying to the comment above this, sorry.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be replying to this comment. I meant to be taking the bottles out.
I'm sorry, I thought this was the strip club next door.
Whenever I hear people freaking out about this, the numbers they quote of people being dropped off always seems incredibly small.
And weren't like half of them dropped off by just one guy?
I'm from Vancouver, and I'm Canadian, but I live in Omaha now. From the get-go, this whole thing has defied parody, because there's been nothing funnier than the reality. Or sadder. Hard to tell.It appears that the current plan is to change the law so that the maximum age for drop off will be THREE DAYS. I'm not sure why that age was chosen--there are very few things that you can find out about a child in that amount of time, other than it will starve in about 1/3 that long.Based on the Gov's comments, I guess the idea is to move that simple, binary "support" or "love" decision to a point earlier on in the process, making the whole thing much more efficient. Hopefully, they'll have some kind of online quiz where people can just answer a couple of questions and find out how they should feel about things.And I am deeply disturbed that I appear to be the only one who immediately thought of this.
WHERE WAS THE DAILY SHOW?
Because three days is "preventing abortions," but 17 years is "helping people" (which would be Socialist).
"3 days" is apparently the same standard other states have adopted.
I defy someone to show me an empirically-based study that conclusively proves 3 days is a better cutoff than 2 days or 5 days or 3 weeks when it comes to preventing abuse and neglect, because of course it doesn't exist. But then, that question is why Nebraska lawmakers stripped the "3 days" language from the statute when it was in committee, leaving the bill to just cover abandonment of a "child."
there are very few things that you can find out about a child in that amount of time, other than it will starve in about 1/3 that long
No, but the average thinking person can tell within *hours* of giving birth whether or not they're cut out for the job. Typically the crushing weight of reality is born along with the baby.
I think I'm going to go an re-read PKD's "the pre persons" (collected in the 5th volume of his short work)