take my teen... please

A few weeks ago in Relief Society, it was announced that we would soon have another of our ward's famous "swap tables" at Enrichment Night. For the benefit of people who have moved into the ward recently, Sister M explained that you bring the stuff you don't want from home, and lay it out, free for the taking, and if it's still there at the end of the night, you take it back home or donate it to the local Council on Aging thrift store.

Someone joked, "Can I bring my teenager?"

[General laughter]

I wasn't laughing, though, when I heard a piece on NPR's "Morning Edition" yesterday morning. It was a follow-up story to an earlier story on "Day to Day" which detailed an unusual loophole in Nebraska's new "safe haven law." Safe haven laws are designed to prevent newborn children from being stashed dead in dumpsters by terrified and desperate young mothers. They designate certain places - hospitals, police stations - where an infant can be dropped off anonymously without the person doing so being charged with the crime of abandonment.

Nebraska was the last state to put a safe haven law on its books (it took effect in July), and in the discussion in the legislature, they decided to do it a little differently from the way other states had done it. All other states have an age cap on the child. In California, a child can be dropped off up to 72 hours after birth; in some some states it is as old as 1 year (in Indiana, for example, children must be younger than 45 days). But in Nebraska next door, apparently some lawmakers felt that it would be arbitrary to put an age limit on this law, because there might be children older than 1 year who would be in danger or at risk, and that this law could legitimately be used to protect them, too - up to age 19.

The unexpected result of this legislative generosity has been that in recent weeks 14 children including preteens and several teenagers, have been abandoned by their biological parents under this law. 11 of them in one night! In one case, a widower dropped off all 9 of his children at once, saying he could no longer take care of them. In another, a parent left a 15-year old, saying he was just too much trouble. Nebraska officials are trying to let parents know about other state services that may be available for families in crisis so they don't have to use the safe haven law, which was designed as an absolute last resort.

A critic of safe haven laws, adoption agency executive director Adam Pertman, finds Nebraska's law particularly alarming because it is not focused on infants and parents. Casting such a wide net "circumvents every rational practice in child welfare that I'm aware of," he said. "That's as nicely as I can put it." (quote is from here).

Now, both teens and parents might joke about severing that relationship, and in some truly troubled households, a teen and her/his parents indeed might be better off separated. But the recent misuse of this law's intended purpose does raise some disturbing issues and hypotheticals to ponder, and it's tragic that some families have chosen - so soon - to abandon older children to the care of the state (kids who can surely know what's happening, even if they cannot give consent) without any legal consequences.