Mother Strives to Save Unwanted Babies

In 1996, Debi Faris voluntarily embarked on the joyless task of recovering the bodies of “trash can” babies from county coroners, wrapping the abandoned infants in snug afghans and burying them in tiny coffins at her private Garden of Angels cemetery.

But as she prepared this month for funerals No. 42 and 43, Faris said, her “mission of heart” had become so heavy that it was time for the Legislature to put her out of business. “That is my . . . goal,” she said.

She wants California to create a “safe place” at hospital emergency rooms where desperate, unprepared mothers can surrender their babies--no questions asked--rather than toss newborns into dumpsters, ditches, landfills and other hostile sites.

“It is the hardest thing in the world to put a beautiful, healthy child into the ground. . . . We want them to be given the opportunity to live,” Faris said.

For nearly four years, Faris’ carefully tended miniature cemetery near the San Bernardino Mountains at Calimesa has been filling with bodies recovered from coroners in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

Faris, a Yucaipa mother of three, said she is committed to providing her emotionally exhausting service indefinitely but is convinced that babies destined for abandonment deserve a better chance.

She persuaded state Sen. Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) to introduce a bill to shield the mothers from prosecution if they hand over their infants in good condition to emergency room employees.

At the hospital, the newborns would be cared for until they could be transferred to Child Protective Services or other welfare agencies. The bill, SB 1368, would apply to babies up to 72 hours old and allow mothers who changed their minds to reclaim them.

“Our message to young mothers is that guilt, shame or panic are not reasons to destroy a newborn’s chance at life,” Brulte said.

The bill, based on a pioneering Texas law signed by Gov. George W. Bush last year, is scheduled for its first Senate committee hearing Tuesday. A similar bill, AB 1764, by Assemblyman Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove) is advancing in the Assembly.

The Texas statute was a response to a series of cases in the Houston area, where 13 babies were found abandoned in the first 10 months of 1999, three of them dead. There was rising national concern over what appeared to be a worsening problem, highlighted by two shocking cases in the East.

In one, a New Jersey high school student attending her senior prom delivered a baby in a lavatory, hid it in a trash can and returned to the dance. In the other, a Delaware college couple wrapped their newborn in plastic and put it in a motel trash container.

Government agencies do not count “trash can” infants, alive or dead. But the federal Department of Health and Human Services made at least one unscientific attempt to assess the scope of the problem by surveying newspaper stories. The search turned up 65 cases of discarded infants in 1991-92, five of whom were found dead. By 1996-97, the total had climbed to 105, 33 of them dead.

Supporters of the Texas legislation believe that the real figure must be far higher, especially for dead infants because their bodies may never be found.

“We average usually 10 to 20 a year,” said Doyle Tolbert, a Los Angeles County coroner’s investigator. “The babies we see in trash cans are probably from younger females who are frightened. They have gotten pregnant and don’t know which way to turn.”

Fear, Faris said, turns to profound desperation and “develops into a tragic act of doing something terribly wrong.” These mothers mistakenly believe that “all I can do is get rid of it. No one will ever know,” she said.

The California bills have attracted a variety of supporters, including Planned Parenthood affiliates, law enforcement officials, hospitals and county welfare directors.

They also have drawn a few critics, including Project Cuddle, a Costa Mesa counseling hotline for expectant women who are thinking about abandoning their babies.

The organization, which says it has “saved” more than 150 infants, asserts that “not one pregnant girl/woman has taken advantage of the [Texas] law,” which took effect last September.

Justin Unruh, a legislative aide who helped shepherd the bill through the Texas Legislature, conceded that there have been reports of nine infant abandonments since September, three involving babies found in trash cans and six in which mothers gave birth in hospitals and then fled.

Unruh blamed limited public awareness of the new law, noting that it provided no funds to finance a publicity campaign. Consequently, efforts to notify Texans fell to the Baby Moses Project, a nonprofit organization.

“These mothers did not know this option was available to them,” Unruh said.

Project Cuddle asserts that under the Brulte and Maddox bills, which provide no money, California would spend valuable energy and resources “educating birth mothers on where to abandon their babies.”

Maddox rejects the idea that providing immunity to prosecution would encourage such behavior. To the contrary, Maddox said, it “is responsible to recognize that you are not capable of caring for this precious gift from God and, instead, make that baby available to a loving family.”

Although California Planned Parenthood supports Brulte’s plan, Katherine Kneer, its chief executive officer, said some form of pre- and postnatal health care should be provided for women who surrender their infants so that “we contribute not to just saving the baby, but to the saving of the mother.”