Thanks.
Last week, a two-week-old baby girl was found in a pile of trash in the Chicago suburb Franklin Park- this, despite the fact that Illinois has a “safe haven” law. Nearly every state in America has a “safe haven” law that allows mothers to abandon their children at designated hospitals, fire stations, or police stations and just walk away from their responsibilities as a parent. There are no legal ramifications or accountability for the mother and few, if any, questions asked- most importantly- where is the child’s father? In most cases, the father is probably unaware of the child as well as the ultimate fate of his child. With the built-in anonymity that “safe haven” laws afford the mother, there is very little chance that the father will ever be contacted so that he can pursue custody and care for his child and be afforded due process and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.
“Safe haven” laws were passed to protect infants that are literally being thrown into dumpsters and garbage cans and left to die. However, statistics have shown that even with the “safe haven” laws in place; mothers are still disposing of their infants in this terrible way, as with the baby found Tuesday evening. Each “safe haven” law in each state has its own unique language. Some states give mothers 30 days to abandon their children and others, such as Nebraska, give no age definition of a minor child. A man in Nebraska recently dropped 9 of his 10 children off at a hospital; they ranged from ages 1 to 17- all of them fitting the legal definition of a minor child. This rare occurrence of a father abandoning his children under a “safe haven” law only complicates the problems with the law itself. Perhaps the most powerful argument against “safe haven” laws is that they enable children to be thought of as throwaway trash.
The irony in the “safe haven” laws lies with continued gender bias that surrounds the rights of fathers. When a father chooses to opt out of parenthood and just walk away from his paternal responsibilities, he becomes a “deadbeat dad” or worse, he goes to jail for failing to live up to his financial responsibilities. Yet, when a mother decides that she will not take care of her child, she is given anywhere from 78 hours to 18 years, in some states, to “safely” abandon her child. Unlike a traditional adoption, the father does not have to be notified, does not have to legally relinquish his parental rights, and the child is denied a chance to grow up with dad or members of his biological family. A father’s lack of knowledge of the existence of his child or the intentions of the mother to abandon the child is not grounds for termination of a father’s legal rights as a parent. The very nature of the law erodes the importance of the American family and the values we place on it.
Opponents of the law also argue that the mothers who are disposing of their children in such a manner are clearly in need of psychological counseling, yet, there is no opportunity to provide them with the counseling they are in desperate need of. There is also an aspect of validating to a teenager, or an irresponsible adult, that there are no consequences to their actions. These “safe haven” laws are telling our youth that they can go ahead and have casual, unprotected sex without responsibility. Pregnancy no longer means that you must become a parent, just return the child and move on with your life. Lastly, unlike traditional adoption, children who are abandoned in such a way are denied the right to know their medical history, a consequence that can be life threatening.
While the “safe haven” laws were born out of good intentions, the problems that they have created outweigh the benefits, especially when mothers continue to abandon their children in dangerous and life threatening ways. Lawmakers and legislators are torn on how to fix the laws so that they protect the child while still affording the father parental rights and safeguards to claim and raise his child. Most states have created punitive father registries to afford fathers notice, however, these registries are pointless if the mother’s identity is not established and the fathers are not provided actual notice. Also, the fact that these registries exist is not known to the public at large.
Fathers cannot be kicked to the curb while their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection are trampled upon. “Safe haven” laws aren’t working for everyone and need to be reengineered so that they correctly protect children who would otherwise meet certain death, and protect their fathers who have a right to know that their children exist and are about to be abandoned.
Jeffery M. Leving, Esq.
Chicago, IL
Jeffery M. Leving is a nationally renowned attorney and fathers’ rights advocate. He is the author of “Fathers’ Rights” and “Divorce Wars” and the founder of dadsrights.com. Mr. Leving is also the Governor appointed Chairman of the Illinois Council on Responsible Fatherhood.
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Denis said,
Thanks to the VAWA this happens a lot.
Okay, you are a practicing attorney.
Why has there not been a class-action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the VAWA? Or any lawsuits?
I would think this would be a lucrative area for trial lawyers.
October 7, 2008 at 9:47 am
poiuyt said,
… because too many people, a majority of them, leading-elite males, get rich quick, on the bastardisation of especially male children, and the consequential economic and moral parasitism-racket against husbands and fathers !
But the suprising aspect of it all is that those guilty traitors of the male gender, as instruments of the tyranic-injustice against their own sex feel no shame at all.
Do these lowly scumbags higher up the food chain not understand that their activities in service of the womanist-ideal brings down the esteem and prestigee of maleness ?. Every one nowadays, even certifiable fools, plus feminists have come to expect males, at whatever level to betray themselvses for nothing.
October 7, 2008 at 10:09 am
T Finnan said,
October 7, 2008 at 1:05 pm
amfortas said,
The mind struggles and comes up with rationalisations such as - “the “safe haven” laws were born out of good intentions” - despite one not being able to discern any such good intent nor any good outcome.
We seek a ‘logic’ where there is only a psychosis.
These ‘laws’ are a travesty born from a distorted mind; one that has lost any semblance of moral compass. Not just one mind - it would be easier on us all were it just one. But many. The minds of so many, particularly in the western nations, the flower of civilisation nations, have been infected with a viral-like illness that is intent on a creative way of destroying life and love and humanity as we know it.
Thanatos is alive and well and has risen to the fore several times in history driving a number of civilisations to death. It is here again.
We - in the broad sense - are destroying fatherhood; destroying motherhood. We are destroying Families, that singular Unit upon which all growth and forward civilising development has been based. We are murdering babies. Those that ‘get through, we are throwing them in trash-cans.
There are those not just ‘excusing’ these horrific activities, but are finding all sorts of bizarre rationalisations and deliberately doing them. They create the means and the ‘reasons’. They are
the ones voting in of manipulators and the corrupt, thoughtfully and with a clear intent.
We here are not those people of course. There are some of us who allow it; those of us who permit our taxes to fund it and reward the mad and the bad. There are the indifferent; the ones who see and say nothing, just get on with the shopping and the working and the tax-paying, the voting in of manipulators and the corrupt without thought. And there are the ‘worriers’. us, here. We ‘comment; we collate; we educate to unhearing ears. And most of us - to be frank - are cowards. We are quite aware that what is needed is a very ‘firm’ response.
But history tells us that the only response that has any hope of success usually ends in strong resistance and bloodshed. And we fail to address that. We are civilised and will join the queue to the slaughterhouse. Oh, and drop our vote in the ballot box as we shuffle past.
Or, will we bite the bullet and then….chamber it?
October 8, 2008 at 12:57 am
USA Don't throw the baby in the trash-can Dearie. And don't tell the Dad. - antimisandry.com said,
October 8, 2008 at 2:26 am
Robert Stevens said,
Women that throw their babies into trash dumpsters, don’t need counseling , they need to be locked up and punished severly.
As a society, we are faced with a tough, but simple choice. Either the men will stand up and put a rough end to the abuses and violations of their rights and at the same time take away the “priviledges” women have been abusing for 40 years, then restore our society. Or we can sit back and watch it all fall apart. Either way the miscreants who created all these problems will be gone.
They will end up on the dockets of justice or if society falls, they will not live long enough to stand trial.
Sooner, if we are lucky, or later if not, good sense and sanity take over.
October 8, 2008 at 7:20 am
merck said,
________________________________________________________
It’s nice to see people in the legal profession finally waking up to some of the injustices perpetrated against men and children in our society on a routine basis.
How long will it take for this man’s colleagues to clean the wax out of their ears? What will it take for them to realize that depriving people of their rights only leads to one thing?
The saddest irony, not mentioned in this article, is that had this young woman decided to visit an abortion clinic, she could have legally aborted the child with no consequences whatsoever. No one would’ve ever been the wiser. The child is safe now, and in this particular case, that’s most important.
Roe v Wade is at the root of this problem. It teaches our children that a child’s life is worth nothing, to be disposed of as if it were garbage.
Think about the 1,500,000 children every year who don’t escape the dumpster behind abortion clinics nationwide.
October 9, 2008 at 7:01 am
shatteredmen said,
I also wonder, were the save haven laws passed to keep babies safe…or to keep the women who abandon them safe from becoming a criminal? Even as it is, from what I have seen even with the safe haven laws, many mothers who dispose of their babies still only get a slap on the hand. I contend that since they do have legal options, if they abandon a baby and that baby dies, she should be charged with FIRST DEGREE MURDER.
October 9, 2008 at 10:57 pm
amfortas said,
No responsibility motherhood. Dump the baby and have the father pay for it and the local firestation keep it as a mascot.
Family? The girl in the next workstation, for this week.
October 10, 2008 at 12:20 am