ACTION ALERT: Help Stop Legal Abandonment Laws in CA
Damsel Plum
HELP STOP LEGAL ABANDONMENT LAWS
March 23, 2000
California has jumped on the Baby Dump Bandwagon by drafting
ill-conceived bills to legalize and even encourage anonymous
abandonment.
AB1764 & SB1368 allow a woman to dump her baby at a police station,
fire house, social welfare office, child protective agency, or
hospital emergency room. The woman will be immune from prosecution
unless she indicates an interest in returning for the child, which in
that case, she will no longer be immune from prosecution. In other
words--"and don't come back".
AB 1764 is scheduled for a hearing before the Public Safety
Committee on March 28th, anytime after 9:00 am, then will likely
go before the Senate Judiciary Committee April 25th.
Baby Dump laws are unproven quick fix solutions to the tragedies of infant
abandonment and infanticide.
Help us protect the rights of the abandoned and put a stop to laws which
fail to protect victims of infanticide. Please take a few moments to read
these facts about legalized abandonment and write a short letter to
legislators expressing concern about such misguided legislation. There's
no evidence these laws work to save any lives. In addition, they
* Obliterate the identity rights of the abandoned child.
* Ignore the causes of infant abandonment and the urgent needs of mothers
in crisis; no counseling or social services are accessible either pre- or
post-abandonment for abandoning mothers.
* Reverse a century long trend in child welfare policy discouraging
abandonment.
* Directly conflict with existing state and federal legislation and U.S.
Supreme Court decisions, such as birthmother revocation periods,
birthfather notification, and the Indian Child Welfare Act.
* Discourage the collection of medical and other background information.
* Prevent anyone from being able to verify that the person leaving the baby
is in fact the parent.
* Open the door to potential fraud and abuse. Georgia Tann, convicted
Tennessee adoption black marketeer of the 1940's, would benefit from these
bills.
State legislators need to know that Baby Dump laws DON'T WORK! Despite a
similar law passed in Texas last year, Texas mothers continue to abandon
babies outside of their Baby Dump system.
This state, and many others, are considering legalized abandonment laws.
Please write to your legislators, And please let legislators across the
nation know how you feel about copycat efforts.
See our position paper on legalized abandonment, and some sample letters, at
http://www.bastards.org/activism/legalized-abandonment.html
We urge all California residents to contact their state legislators and ask
them to vote NO on these ill-conceived bills!
California Assembly Public Safety Committee:
Committee phone (916) 319-3744
Committee Email public...@assembly.ca.gov
Carl Washington, Chair
State Capitol
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0001
(916) 319-2052
Fax: (916) 319-2152
Jim Cunneen, Vice Chair
State Capitol
Room 2174
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 319-2024
fax: (916) 319-2124
jim.c...@assembly.ca.gov
T. Rico Oller
State Capitol
Room 4208
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 319-2004
fax: (916) 319-2104
rico....@assembly.ca.gov
Jim Battin
State Capitol
Room 5126
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 319-2080
Jim.B...@assembly.ca.gov
Gil Cedillo
State Capitol
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0001
(916) 319-2046
Marco Antonio Firebaugh
State Capitol
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0001
Phone: (916) 319-2050
Fax: (916) 319-2150
Assemblymemb...@assembly.ca.gov
Gloria Romero
State Capitol
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0001
Phone: (916) 319-2049
Fax: (916) 319-2149
Gloria...@assembly.ca.gov
Fred Keeley
State Capitol
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0001
Phone: (916) 319-2049
Fax: (916) 319-2149
Fred....@assembly.ca.gov
rkbose
therefore disinterested), I think this needs to be more convincing before
non-BNs will buy it.
The main flaw, as I see it, is that it rests on the argument that the
legislation is unproven in saving lives. Many people, I would guess, will
argue the other way: it doesn't cost much, and it's not proven that it
*doesn't* work. The other arguments then pale contrast with the potential
of saving even a small number of babies from death or disability resulting
from abandonment at unsafe sites.
What you need is something that indicates that (1) Baby dumping mothers
will probably not use the safe sites but continue to dump babies as before;
(2) Mothers who would have relinquished properly with attention to the
child's needs, may instead be attracted to the 'dumping' option; (3) The
existence of 'safe sites' may increase pressure on young mothers (from
others -- boyfriends, parents, etc) to abandon their babies, since it can
be done anonymously, resulting in potential life-long trauma for the mother
and loss of records for the abandoned baby.
I would expect that item #3, if it can be grounded in some sort of research
or even circumstantial evidence, would be the strongest argument against
Safe Sites.
Calling them Baby Dumps and saying they're unproven isn't convincing to
someone picturing a baby in a toilet. And this is a much more emotive issue
for the general public than is the issue of open records.
Rupa
Damsel Plum <anno...@plumsite.com> wrote in article
>
> Baby Dump laws are unproven quick fix solutions to the tragedies of
infant
> abandonment and infanticide.
>
<snip> There's
rkbose
themselves also see to be tailored more to appeal to the already-converted,
rather than to change opinion. They're too easy to refute or trivialise:
see below.
> Baby Dump laws are unproven quick fix solutions to the tragedies of
infant
> abandonment and infanticide.
But even if it's uproven...it *may* work. It may save one baby. Or two. Or
ten.
>
> * Obliterate the identity rights of the abandoned child.
Better than obliterating the abandoned child.
> * Ignore the causes of infant abandonment and the urgent needs of mothers
> in crisis; no counseling or social services are accessible either pre- or
> post-abandonment for abandoning mothers.
The state should do more to reach mothers in crisis. But abandoning mothers
can't be reached even now for counselling or social services.
> * Reverse a century long trend in child welfare policy discouraging
> abandonment.
So what? Babies are still being abandoned.
> * Directly conflict with existing state and federal legislation and U.S.
> Supreme Court decisions, such as birthmother revocation periods,
> birthfather notification, and the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Let the lawyers worry about that.
> * Discourage the collection of medical and other background information.
Abandoned babies don't get that even now.
> * Prevent anyone from being able to verify that the person leaving the
baby
> is in fact the parent.
Let anyone whose baby has been kidnapped go to the police. Let no baby be
adopted out from a safe site until its DNA has been tested and cleared
against any kidnapped baby. And anyway, if it's being done out of spite, or
for ransom, isn't it better that the child to be safe than abandoned
somewhere else -- like the Lindbergh baby?
> * Open the door to potential fraud and abuse. Georgia Tann, convicted
> Tennessee adoption black marketeer of the 1940's, would benefit from
these
> bills.
How?
> State legislators need to know that Baby Dump laws DON'T WORK! Despite a
> similar law passed in Texas last year, Texas mothers continue to abandon
> babies outside of their Baby Dump system.
Yes, but has it saved even *one* child?
The main problem is that BN perceives -- but does not actually state --
that birthmothers are likely to substitute abandonment for relinquishment,
thus bypassing many of the legal/procedural safeguards that protect mother
and child. So BN compares safe-site babies to properly relinquished babies
with accessible records, while many others compare them to abandoned babies
found in trash-heaps.
Rupa
Lainie Petersen
in Germany. The parent can place the baby in the baby dump, which has a
warming bed, a TV monitor, and an alarm system. When a baby is placed in the
baby dump, the alarm goes off and a nurse is dispached to retreive the baby.
The baby is monitored the entire time.
I think that such a system could be dangerous (people who know that a baby
could be in the kiosk might come over and help themselves) and it doesn't do
much to protect the rights of birthfathers, nor does it protect against fraud
(kidnapping and baby selling schemes). But if there were some order to the
system (as well as additional security precautions), then birthmothers (who
may not have been in their right mind at the time of the "dump"), would have
recourse, being able to identify the date, time and location of the dump. The
children could be held for a set amount of time prior to being made available
for adoption.
I remain opposed to baby dump laws. However, if a particular city or county
finds itself with an epidemic of child abandonment on its hands, I am
sympathetic (if not approving), of taking action that would save the lives of
these babies.
Lainie
bmom/adoptee
Ron Morgan
> >
> > Baby Dump laws are unproven quick fix solutions to the tragedies of
infant
> > abandonment and infanticide.
>
>
> You really should have known, DP.
Ian Punnet, syndicated talk radio host in Atlanta, explicitly trumpets the
connection between Open Records and these Baby Dump laws. He claims
responsibility for Georgia's version of the Baby Dump law, which was
thankfully voted down last Tuesday during the final session of the GA
Senate.
Ron
>
> - Don