The cradle's empty at Florida's safe havens

Desperate mothers aren't using the state's Safe Baby Stations. Experts say the law that created the alternative to abandonment has been poorly marketed.

By TOM ZUCCO, Times Staff Writer

© St. Petersburg Times
published August 8, 2002

ST. PETERSBURG -- The sign hangs on the wall just past the sliding-glass doors that lead into the pediatric emergency room at All Children's Hospital. There's a photo of a young woman in the background and in dark pink letters the sign reads:

I didn't tell my parents.

I can't deal with a baby.

NO ONE WILL KNOW

If you cannot support your newborn baby, you have an option.

It's called the Safe Baby Station.

They won't ask any questions. You don't even have to give them your name.

But you will be giving your baby a chance to live.

Take your baby to a Safe Baby Station.

Florida Dept. of Health.

Just below where the sign hangs, put there by someone who probably didn't see the irony, is a metal trash can.

At least 35 states, including Florida, have enacted safe-haven laws in the past two years. The laws, which had nearly universal support, allow a parent to leave an unwanted newborn younger than 3 days old at a hospital, a fire station, a doctor's office or an ambulance station without being charged with a crime. In Florida, fire stations received foundling kits with pacifiers and umbilical clamps.

The laws were designed as an alternative to abandoning a baby in a trash can, a restroom, or some other place where the child's life would be in danger.

But there is little evidence that desperate mothers are taking advantage of the law.

Only two babies have been dropped off at Safe Baby Stations in Florida since the law was passed in July, 2000.

Since the law went into effect in July 2000, as many as 19 newborns have been abandoned, according to the Department of Children and Families. DCF does not track how many of the babies' mothers left them at a safe haven.

At least three other newborns died after they were abandoned. The latest abandonment occurred Monday, when 23-year-old Stephanie Smith left her newborn daughter in a garbage can. Neighbors rescued the child, who on Wednesday was in good condition at All Children's Hospital. Smith has been charged with attempted murder. When she was taken from St. Petersburg General Hospital on Tuesday afternoon and transferred to the Pinellas County Jail. She was wearing a 2002 All-Children's Hospital telethon T-shirt.

The New York Times reported last year that of the first 15 states that passed safe haven laws, only six reported babies dropped off at a designated site. Babies continue to be abandoned illegally in states that have the laws -- more frequently, in some cases, than in states without them.

While babies found dead or discarded in unsafe places make news, they are a tiny portion of those whose mothers give them up. A 1998 federal survey of hospitals nationwide showed that 31,000 infants were left in maternity wards, mostly by drug-addicted mothers. Thousands more newborns are legally relinquished through adoption agencies. (Abandoned babies in Florida are placed for adoption by private adoption agencies. The Department of Children and Families does not become involved unless there are signs of abuse, neglect or mistreatment -- as there were in Smith's case.)

The Florida Department of Health and the Department of Children and Families were given $100,000 for fiscal 2002 to develop a media campaign to inform the public about the law. The agencies did some television and radio advertising, and had 10,000 posters printed and distributed to hospitals and fire stations.

But experts on infant abandonment say it is unrealistic to expect young women traumatized by a secret delivery to seek a safe haven. And the women most likely to respond to publicity campaigns are not likely to endanger their infants to begin with.

"These young women are faced with a situation that is at best a case of one poor judgment after another, to the point of being overwhelmed and not knowing where to turn," explained the Rev. David Gerber, the administrative director of patient and family services at All Children's and a chaplain at the hospital since 1989.

"Those posters shouldn't just be in hospitals. They should be in schools, churches, health department offices, obstetrics offices. . . . It's amazing to me that at a time when the state is taking hits for not providing safety for children, they have a leading program that they don't promote.

"That's why it doesn't work. No one knows it exists."

Gerber said he was asked Monday if the discovery of Smith's baby was a miracle.

"My response was no," he said. "The baby is fine, yes. But we have a 23-year-old woman who is facing attempted first-degree-murder charges. That's not a miracle.

"The good news is that it doesn't happen very often. The better news would be that it doesn't have to happen at all."

State Rep. Sandra Murman, R-Tampa, who sponsored Florida's Safe Haven law, said funding for marketing did not start until January. "So we've only been able to start getting the word out since then. I think we'll start to see some positive results.

"We have a transient state," Murman said , "and we have to figure out what media works best. We're also working through the county health departments and using billboards in areas where we have poverty or high incidents of teenage pregnancy. We got from Healthy Start (a Tampa agency that helps pregnant women get prenatal care) the Zip codes that have highest number of teenage pregnancies. The billboards all went to those Zip codes.

"I'd say by this time next year, the markets will be more penetrated."

But Gerber thinks targeting misses the point in certain areas.

"Abandonment happens across the board," he said. "Look at Monday's case. That young woman (Smith) lives in an upper middle-class neighborhood in northwest St. Petersburg. To target where poverty is or where there are high teen pregnancies is profiling and stereotyping and it's wrong.

"This doesn't happen often," he added, "but it can happen to anyone."

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