NCFA Media : Archived News
Hawaii Governor Lingle’s Veto Endangers Newborns’ Lives
With a stroke of the veto pen on June 20, Governor Linda Lingle missed an opportunity to save the lives of newborns in Hawaii. In states across the country, Safe Havens are protecting newborns from unsafe abandonment and infanticide by panicked, distressed young parents. In vetoing the Safe Haven law, Governor Lingle thumbed her nose at the legislature, which voted overwhelmingly for it - 47 to 3 in the House, and 18 to 5 in the Senate. She also dismissed the decisions of 45 other state legislatures and governors, which have enacted similar laws.
The Department of Health and Human Service reports that 105 infants were found abandoned in public places in 1998, 33 of them dead; 161 were found abandoned in 1999 and 2000, 103 of them dead. As the governor said in her own statement of objections to the bill, "if it saves just one life it will be a good law." Without a doubt these laws are saving lives, as Safe Haven programs in states around the country, professional research, and common sense prove. Guardian of Angels, New York’s Safe Haven project, reported that 2002 saw the safe placement of 27 babies in New York Safe Havens, while no infants were found abandoned during that time. An analysis by Safe Haven foundations in 12 states documented 103 infants safely placed within their programs. A March 2003 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, entitled "Newborns Killed or Left to Die by a Parent," conservatively estimated that as many as 85 lives could be saved nationwide annually, were there Safe Haven protections in place.
To be against Hawaii’s Safe Haven law, Governor Lingle has to make one of two arguments regarding these 27, or 85, or 103 persons’ lives. Either she has to argue that every single one of these babies would have been relinquished safely anyway, without the Safe Haven law - a preposterous assertion. In fact, opponents of Safe Haven laws do not deny that the laws save lives. The obvious question, then, is: Just how many babies do Safe Havens have to save from death in a dumpster in order for Governor Lingle to consider them worthwhile?
Alternatively, Governor Lingle has to argue that some other concern is greater than saving babies’ lives. Her preference for access to medical history over saving newborns’ lives is an unusual set of priorities, to say the least. Access to medical records is of no use to the baby who dies from unsafe abandonment. Furthermore, genetic testing provides far more information about health predispositions than do the medical histories of biological relatives. It is also misguided for the governor to risk lives in order to avoid the chance of a newborn being placed in a Safe Haven without a parent’s consent. If the parent is responsibly involved in the baby’s life, he or she will notice the baby’s absence, report it to the police, and have the opportunity to gain custody.
Vetoing Safe Havens over flimsy reasons such as these is to throw out the baby with the bath water, literally.
The other tragedy of infanticide and unsafe infant abandonment is the ruining of the parents’ lives. By providing desperate parents a non-threatening escape from their crisis, Safe Havens enable them to avoid resorting impulsively to the criminal acts of unsafe abandonment or infanticide. The governor’s decision condemns them to their irrational and reckless impulses, leading to their imprisonment and a lifetime of guilt and remorse.
What horrid fate is Governor Lingle protecting these babies from? Adoption. Children placed safely in Safe Havens enter the adoption process and are adopted into permanent, loving, and stable families. The governor ought to know that children adopted as infants grow up just as healthy, productive, and fulfilled in their lives as those raised in their biological families, with or without their genealogical records. Adoption through placement in a Safe Haven is not cold, cruel "abandonment," as opponents portray it. In fact, it is the most loving and responsible option that some desperate young parents can manage.
Thomas Atwood
President, National Council For Adoption
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The National Council For Adoption (NCFA) is a leading research, education, and advocacy nonprofit whose mission is to promote the well-being of children, birthparents, and adoptive families, by advocating for the positive option of adoption. Since its founding in 1980, NCFA has been a leader in promoting sound child welfare and adoption policies that present adoption as a positive option for women with unplanned pregnancies, make it easier for children to be adopted out of foster care into families, reduce obstacles to transracial adoption, make adoption more affordable through the adoption tax credit, and facilitate intercountry adoptions.
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