Stop Encouraging Child Abandonment

New York Times Co./Hulton Archive/Getty Images
People in New York celebrate the ratification of the 21st Amendment ending Prohibition, Dec. 5, 1933

Today marks the 75^th anniversary of the ratification of the 21^st amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the amendment that repealed Prohibition.

December 5^th is commonly known as “Repeal Day.”

The 18th amendment is the only Constitutional amendment ever repealed.

The coming of Prohibition was heralded by its proponents as a cure for societal ills. Evangelist and Prohibition proponent Rev. Billy Sunday, for example, exclaimed:

"The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."

Unfortunately the real legacy of the Prohibition years was a staggering increase in American crime statistics and the origins of much of modern American organized crime:

·        Arrests for Prohibition Violations: INCREASED 102%

·        Arrests for Drunkenness and Disorderly Conduct: INCREASED 41%

·        Arrests of Drunken Drivers: INCREASED 81%

·        Thefts and Burglaries: INCREASED 9%

·        Homicides, Assault, and Battery: INCREASED 13%

·        Number of Federal Convicts: INCREASED 561%

·        Federal Prison Population: INCREASED 366%

·        Total Federal Expenditures on Penal Institutions: INCREASED 1,000%

Prohibition in America lasted 13 years.

Once the 21^st Constitutional amendment was ratified, much of the decision making power when it came to alcohol was left to individual states and local jurisdictions. The fact that power over such was left in the hands of the state resulted in a patchwork quilt of local laws and ordinances.

When it came to demanding the full repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment opponents of prohibition had no qualms about asking for what they really wanted, Repeal, and an end to Prohibition.

So, what on earth does this have to do with state legalized child abandonment?

Symbolically, plenty.

Just as the Prohibition movement started at the state level and grew towards a national policy, so too has legalized baby dumping.

The first of the “baby Moses laws”/”safe haven” laws was enacted in Texas in 1999, signed by then governor George W. Bush. State by state the act of legalizing child abandonment grew until now everywhere in the United States except Washington D.C. it has become legal to abandon a child (with varying age restrictions.)

The goals of the “National Safe Haven Alliance” (proponents of legalized child abandonment) include both nationalizing/federalizing legalized child abandonment, and creating a national uniform standardization of baby dumping.

Enacting such state laws has been touted as a means to bring an end to “dumpster babies” and other such forms of neonaticide and infanticide. They are sold with equally glowing hyperbole about how women everywhere will now turn to “safe havens” rather than abandon their babies under unsafe circumstances.

Baby Moses laws are fueled by every bit as much wishful thinking as the pseudo-utopian vision Billy Sunday marketed in relation to prohibition. Both were, and are mere panaceas. Far from being even mere innocuous mistakes, though, both such ‘solutions’ have caused harm.

The full scope of the damage done remains to be fully understood. Nebraska’s brief experiment with expanding its dump law to encompass kids up through their teens provided an initial glimpse of the laws ramifications. At least 48 kids endured some form of interaction with Nebraska’s “safe haven” law before it was aged down to those 30 days and younger. One boy attempted to “haven” himself after the law changed.

The kids’ responses to being legally abandoned by their parents, caretakers, and guardians through the state’s program  is perhaps best summarized by the words of a pregnant 14 year old girl who was one of the many abandoned:

“I don’t want anything to happen to kids like it happened to me.”

These older kids join the other younger kids already legally abandoned under other states’ legalized baby dumping schemes. How many nationwide? Numbers vary. Many states simply do not keep track, but somewhere between one and two thousand other kids make up America’s first legally dumped generation so far.

The full extent of such damage is immeasurable for now as we are currently in the fog of being in the midst of it.

We are 9 years into legalized child abandonment in (the vast majority of) America.

Those of us who came together to form Stop Encouraging Child Abandonment (SECA) are working for what we really want: for America to return to being the country we grew up in, a place where child abandonment was never to be state-encouraged via child welfare policy. We feel we are stating the obvious: child abandonment is always bad policy.

SECA envisions returning child welfare policy in the United States to its previous state, restoring the United States to once again being a place where abandoning a child is never a state-sanctioned act.

To that end, we advocate nothing short of the full repeal of all legalized child abandonment laws. Child abandonment must never be actively encouraged by the state.

Having learned from historical movements that repealed Prohibition and that unsuccessfully sought social change through repeal, and having seen the damage caused in just one state (such as Nebraska) where child dumping is enabled, we will not be satisfied with nor placated by piecemeal or patchwork temporary “victories.” We fully understand that “partial victories” are not sustainable victories.

Our work is not done until legalized child abandonment is permanently removed from every jurisdiction. When any place is left as a (national or even international) dumping ground for children all kids are unsafe and left at risk.

So we begin the work of SECA today, stepping forth with a vision of what America has been and could be again, a more genuine “haven”, where children are never abandoned at the state’s encouragement. A place where child abandonment is to be deterred where possible, not embraced as policy.

Today’s kids deserve better than the idea that parenting is an opt in/opt out act. They deserve better than to have to make it past that initial period wherein child dumping has been legalized. They deserve so much more than to be stripped of their authentic identities, cultural, and genetic information by most states legalized abandonment laws.

In short kids deserve better than legalized abandonment.

SECA exists to support the civil, human, and identity rights of both those dumped and those who will be at risk of being dumped for however long legalized abandonment remains on the books.

We will work to educate, advocate, and demonstrate towards nothing short of the full repeal of all legalized abandonment laws, internationally.

(Yes, internationally, because baby dumps laws are not confined to a mere domestic problem.)

Most of all, we look forward to celebrating a “Legalized Child Abandonment Repeal Day.” We work toward a day when the disastrous social experiment of state legalized child dumping is a thing of the past, to be learned from and never to be repeated.

We work towards a day when SECA will no longer be necessary and legalized child dumping would be relegated to being a mere disastrous social policy tucked safely between the pages of family genealogical records and history books alongside other such unfortunate “learning experiences"/errors.

Published December 5, 2008