A Warm, Safe Place for Unwanted Babies

A young mother, frightened and desperate, called the emergency room at a local hospital and asked, “Is this the place I can leave my baby?” A few hours later she walked through the hospital door, eyes full of tears, and handed over her chubby-cheeked, healthy infant daughter to a smiling stranger.

She turned and walked out. No questions were asked. No police were called. It wasn’t abandonment. She won’t face criminal charges. Thanks to a program initiated in the area 14 months ago, a mother can leave a baby less than 72 hours old at one of nine hospitals with no fear of prosecution.

“Prevention is a far better alternative than prosecution,” said John Tyson Jr., Mobile County district attorney, who helped create what he says is the first program of its kind in the country. The Alabama District Attorneys Assn. joined Tyson last fall, agreeing not to press abandonment charges where such a program exists.

Tyson, who receives calls daily from officials who want to follow Mobile’s example, hopes that this growing interest will soon replace tragic reports of babies killed or abandoned with reports of babies saved in safe places.

In Texas, where 13 babies were abandoned in 10 months last year, a state law was passed in September that removes all threat of prosecution for anyone who leaves an unharmed baby with an emergency medical service. Bills introduced recently in the California Legislature by Sen. Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) and Assemblyman Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove) would allow mothers with unwanted babies 30 days old or younger to leave them at county hospital emergency rooms, police or fire stations or child protective agencies with no threat of prosecution. And near St. Paul, Minn., three county hospitals have started similar programs.

Though there are no national statistics available on the number of abandoned infants, a survey of media reports by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed a rise: 108 newborns abandoned in public places in 1998, compared with 65 in 1991.

“It is something that has always happened,” said Joyce Johnson, spokeswoman for the Child Welfare League of America. “We really do think that people just aren’t aware of their options, that they don’t have to leave a child on someone’s doorstep.”

Tyson and Jodi Brooks, a local TV news anchorwoman, developed the program here. Brooks gathered together local hospital and social services personnel and then invited Tyson to handle the legal issues.

Not prosecuting was an easy call for Tyson. He was sick of cases involving injured or murdered infants. He and Brooks met during a trial known in this area as the “Baby Variali” case. Tyson’s office was prosecuting the baby’s mother and grandmother for drowning an 8-pound newborn boy in a toilet. (Both women are now serving 25-year prison sentences.)

At the same time, Tyson was prosecuting six other adults in the deaths of infants and toddlers. “That year, or year and a half, seals forever any questions in my mind about the value of prevention,” he said.

In the months since the Mobile-area program was set up, two infants have been turned in to a local emergency room and two pregnant women have called Brooks seeking help for their unborn babies. She referred them to private adoption agencies and feels that by doing so she saved their babies’ lives. No deaths of newborns have been reported and only one baby has been abandoned. That little boy, discovered in the woods by sanitation workers, is now thriving in a foster home, though neither his mother nor his father has been located.

Tyson and Brooks know they must reach young women too frightened to talk about their pregnancies. Thousands of brochures are being distributed to schools, clubs for teenagers and other places where they can catch the eyes of desperate mothers to be. The brochure gives a telephone number for confidential consultation.

Every newborn that arrives at an emergency room receives a thorough physical. Once the babies are declared healthy, social service workers locate suitable foster homes. As news of the program spreads, Tyson and Brooks are receiving calls from people wanting to become foster parents, a bonus in a state where there are only 1,731 approved foster homes and 4,564 children in foster care. If a mother who gives up her baby changes her mind and wants the child back, she can return for the baby within six months. The mom with the chubby-cheeked daughter did that.

Teri Little, who had received that baby at Springhill Memorial Hospital, encountered her second “program baby” on Dec. 24. Little recalled how different the two cases were. It was obvious the first mother wanted to keep her baby. The second was in a hurry to hand the infant boy over and be on her way. She was unemotional, detached, cold.

“She was like, ‘Take him. Here’s this bag of groceries. I’m gone,’ ” Little said. “She’ll never know what she’s done for him. That’s the sad part about it.”

By that night, the little 7-pound fellow registered as “John Christmas Doe” was snuggled in a warm crib in his new foster home.