Although a rash of abandoned baby deaths have spurred Santa
Clara County supervisors to add fire stations to the list of
locations where newborns can be left with no questions asked, San
Benito County officials see no need to make changes here.
Although a rash of abandoned baby deaths have spurred Santa Clara County supervisors to add fire stations to the list of locations where newborns can be left with no questions asked, San Benito County officials see no need to make changes here. The Safely Surrendered Baby law, which was signed into state law in 2001, allows an individual to drop off an infant three days or younger to a hospital without prosecution for child abandonment.
The San Benito County Board of Supervisors haven’t discussed the law and doesn’t have plans to put anything on the agenda because there have been no cases of abandoned babies in the county, according to Supervisor Pat Loe.
A parent or legal guardian could drop off a newborn at Hazel Hawkins Hospital, the only location in San Benito that has state-mandated procedures for taking the infants, said Marian Anderson, director of the emergency department at the hospital.
The guidelines are geared around the child, not the guardian, and hospital personnel receiving an infant would attempt to get as much information about the child and parent as possible, Anderson said.
“We would try to get some kind of information if they changed their mind, as a way of proving who they are,” she said. “We would try to get a medical history of the baby and the family… and the baby would be evaluated by a doctor and given medical treatment.”
A bracelet would be put on the baby and a matching bracelet would be issued to the parent or guardian as a way to connect the two.
After that the hospital would notify Child Protective Services and social service workers would take the child from there, Anderson said.
The law allows for a 14-day period in which the mother or guardian may change their mind and reclaim the baby.
Signs are posted in the hospital lobby and in the emergency room in both English and Spanish, explaining the law and procedures around the safe surrender, Anderson said.
But because there is no profile of women who are likely to abandon their babies, promoting the program as another option for desperate women is difficult, she said.
“It crosses all age groups, and there’s no certain ethnicity or education level – there’s no rhyme or reason to it,” she said. “So it’s hard to know how you market this.”
Anderson said many times women who abandon their babies have either been hiding their pregnancies or don’t receive prenatal care, so posting information about the law in health clinics or other places pregnant women would normally frequent would be useless.
“Maybe you could put it on a bus,” she said. “Maybe we just don’t have the information out there, but how do you target? This is a tough topic.”
It may be tough to disseminate the information, but it is a critical resource and people need to know it is available to them, said Hollister Police Chief Jeff Miller.
Infants are rarely abandoned, which is why it causes such an uproar by the news media when it happens, Miller said.
“It’s sad we have to have it, but I’m glad we have it because the alternative is to have dead babies,” Miller said.
The safe surrender law will be repealed on Jan. 1, 2006 unless legislation extends or revokes it, according to the Department of Social Services.
Anyone who would like more information about safe surrender can call Hazel Hawkins Hospital at (831) 637-5711, the San Benito County Social Services Agency at (831) 636-4190 or the California Safely Surrendered Baby Law hot line at 877-272-3327.
