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What Nebraska Learned (and Didn't) When it Allowed Parents To Abandon Their Kids

Everyone lusts after stories of bad mothers—the worse, the juicier. As you might recall, in the late 1990s, at the peak of the Clinton-era culture wars, a moral panic arose over "dumpster" or "toilet" babies—infants abandoned by panicked, often teenage moms who had told no one they were expecting a child. In the spring of 1997, the nation was riveted by an especially horrific case. In New Jersey, 18-year old Melissa Drexler gave birth to a baby boy at the senior prom, stuffed the child into a trash bin, and returned to the dance floor.The baby died, and Drexler served three years in prison.

"Safe haven" or "baby Moses" laws emerged as a response to such crimes. They allowed parents to abandon their children to the state at designated locations without being charged with a crime. The pro-life movement, which heartily supported the laws, contended that baby abandonment was on the rise because Roe v. Wade had eroded the "culture of life." That is doubtful at best—the abandonment of disabled, weak, and, in many cultures, female newborns has taken place throughout human history. Nevertheless, it's a good thing to provide a safe, anonymous way for struggling parents to turn an infant over to the state. Though safe havens are used extremely rarely, there's no reason for them not to be there.

But these laws had unintended consequences. As the New York Times reported last month, after Nebraska passed a safe haven law in July, officials were shocked that parents were abandoning children as old as 17. Sometimes the parents were suffering from mental illness; often the children were. Many of the families were uninsured or underinsured. But whatever the cause, in the midst of a financial crisis, and in a state with some of the lowest spending on mental health and child welfare services, dozens of parents seemed so unable to cope that they were ready to abandon their kids.

Today, Nebraska responded by amending the safe haven law to apply only to babies younger than 30 days old. And while that will prevent these other families in crisis from coming out of the woodwork, it will do nothing to address the underlying problems of poverty and health care. Just a reminder that while we obsess about freakish stories in our fervor for identifying society's "worst mothers," bigger problems are often hidden in plain sight.

Sex and the Sect

The real goal all along, or so it seems plausible to me, has been a criminal prosecution of male leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints found to have impregnated, and otherwise mistreated, young adolescent girls bound to them in "spiritual marriages." It was a Herculean challenge, given a community so barricaded against the outside world. But a sweeping raid, however unwarranted it was soon judged to be, forced open the doors long enough to gather DNA and other evidence from the women and children necessary to substantiate any charges. What's more, the judge's order yesterday evidently specifies that the criminal investigation go on, and facilitates it by barring sect members from traveling outside Texas. In addition, it subjects sect members to continued scrutiny by Child Protective Services. Already the prospect of such supervision seems to have elicited an avowal that the sect will cease to condone underage marriage. It's enough to make ignoring legal requirements look like good social policy-fitting in its way, I suppose, when dealing with a community based on polygamy.