Nebraska Legislature amends safe-haven law
The new law will allow only infants up to 30 days old to be abandoned at hospitals, closing the loophole that applied to all minors up to 18 years.
Reporting from Lincoln, Neb. — The Nebraska Legislature today closed a loophole in a controversial law that allowed parents to abandon their children at hospitals.
By a 43-5 vote, the unicameral Legislature amended its safe-haven law to only apply to infants up to 30 days old. Previously the law applied to all minors up to 18 years.
Once Gov. Dave Heineman signs the emergency bill, a step expected later today, it will become law.
Since Nebraska's law went into effect in September, 35 children have been abandoned, mostly age 11 or older. Many were left by parents such as Melyssa Cowburn, who said they had no other way to get help for their troubled children.
First, Cowburn's 5-year-old child tried to bash in a baby's head with a hammer. Then he set the shower curtain on fire. The next day he plugged all the sinks and toilets in their apartment and flooded the place.
Cowburn and her husband had tried unsuccessfully to get their insurance company to pay for mental health treatment for the boy. The difficulty she had keeping him under control had already helped drive her to attempt suicide last year. Now she felt she had only one option: She flew with her child to Nebraska last week and tearfully left him there.
This state has become notorious for being the one place in the country with a law whose wording allows parents to abandon children up to age 18. Its unique safe-haven law was intended to let parents leave unwanted infants at hospitals without legal consequences.
The Nebraska Legislature spent this week in a special session, frantically trying to revise the law.
But children's advocates as well as parents such as Cowburn say the state has done nothing to address the problem exposed by the safe-haven law: desperate families quietly struggling to raise mentally ill children with little help from the government. "There are parents like me who really need help," Cowburn said. "I don't know how to help him. I don't know what else to do."
Nebraska's Legislature has vowed to address the problem when it meets for its regular session in January. On Thursday, it created a special committee to formulate proposals during the next two months.
"It has been a blessing in disguise," state Sen. Amanda McGill, who chairs the committee, said of the response to the safe-haven law. "It has brought to light a serious problem."
