What are safe haven laws?
A flurry of Houston baby abandonments in the ’90s led Texas to become the first state to enact a safe haven law in 1999.
Created as an incentive for parents in crisis who are unable to care for their newborns, the law allow parents to drop off babies 60 days or younger at any hospital, fire station or EMS station in the state, no questions asked.
The baby will then be protected and given medical care until a permanent home is found. Provided the baby arrives unharmed and safe, the parents avoid prosecution for abandonment or neglect.
Do people actually use the laws?
Roughly 400,000 babies are born in Texas each year, but data shows that a small fraction of people actually utilize the option.
Just 172 infants have been relinquished under the state’s safe haven law since 2009, according to data from the Department of Family and Protective Services.
Why?
Most families have likely never heard of it, said Sheila M. Katz, a sociology professor at the University of Houston.
This is especially true for middle- and low-income families who may not have the “extra bandwidth” to explore something until they’re in the situation, Katz said.
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Katz said safe haven laws are “very good” at doing what they’re designed to do, but weren’t created to be an option for people unwilling to continue pregnancies.
“It’s taking a law and trying to make it look like a band-aid for bigger issues,” she said.
“If a woman is in an unhealthy relationship and decides to get an abortion to sever ties,” Katz added, “a safe haven law will not help in this situation.”
Or, to put it another way, people who choose to get abortions do so because they don’t want to be pregnant. There’s a separate decision made about what to do after giving birth once that one has been made. The impression I get is that the kind of person who would dump a baby at a fire station is someone who felt truly desperate and trapped and without any other option. While it is very likely that the post-Dobbs criminalization of abortion in Texas will increase that population, the availability of abortion pills and the still-robust abortion access network may mitigate that. I could be wrong, of course – we may in fact see enough of an increase in that population to drive an equivalent increase in the number of babies getting deposited at these locations. If you think that’s something to cheer about, well, you know what I think of you.
I wouldn’t consider abortion to be a fix for “unhealthy relationships,” and it won’t deter an abusive partner.