This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

Thursday November 13th, before the Nebraska legislature’s special session began, two siblings about to be legally abandoned by their mother at Methodist Hospital decided they didn’t want to be among Nebraska’s dumped kids statistics. The brother and sister ditched the dump and ran.

The boy, age 14, was found pretty quickly, but his 17 year old older sister proved to be elusive.

Within hours of their attempted escape, the first newscast hit.

Methodist Hospital Confirms New Safe Haven Case; Children Flee KPTM(Fox/Faux news)
Posted: Nov 13, 2008 04:51 PM

Updated: Nov 18, 2008 04:46 PM

Methodist Hospital confirms to KPTM FOX 42 that it received the state’s latest safe haven case Thursday afternoon.

A hospital spokesman says a mother left her 14-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter at the hospital between 3:15 and 3:30pm.

The pair ran from the hospital some time after they were dropped off. The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services says the girl left the hospital, but the boy is in the state’s custody.

Nebraska DHHS counted both of the kids as “safe haven” cases, (link opens a PDF) even though the girl had fled before law enforcement could arrive. The Nebraska DHHS press release about their case and the incident, labels them the 32nd and 33rd kids in the official count.

Whereas usually, I’d call the Nebraska official stats too low, undercounting many instances of kids interacting with the “safe haven” systems out of the official tabulation, this may be the one and only instance of an overcount, the count going one kid extra high due to counting a kid who escaped before law enforcement could arrive and she could become an official “safe haven” case.

As we would later learn, her brother only entered the system after being tracked down off hospital premises by police and taken into custody.

My co-author on Children of the Corn, Marley Greiner picked the story up that evening, giving it the headline on her evening update piece:

BORN TO RUN! TWO ESCAPE SAFE HAVEN MOM November 13, 2008

We made the decision that in our Nebraska unofficial statistical tabulation based on media reports, that she was more aptly characterized as what Marley has labeled an “attempted” dump. Based on the numbers we’ve uncovered, her brother was at minimum kid number 43. She would have been at least the 44th kid to interact with the law at least on the level of being taken, in this case under flase pretenses, to a hospital for the purposes of dumping them.

(Naturally, as time has gone on, and we’ve started to hear directly from staff at the hospitals themselves, it’s become readily apparent both of these tabulations are gross undercounts. Numerous kids had been taken to hospitals with intent to dump and in one form or another never made it into the official tabulation, be that because the kids were later taken back home, or simply considered disqualified from the official count.)

By the following day, the story was getting still more coverage. The legislative special session began on the 14th, and so in many ways, the fact that she was still on the run got overshadowed.

Unlike the girl from Iowa who had been legally abandoned in Nebraska only to be returned to Iowa (as such was Nebraska’s policy towards out of state dumps) who went on to become a teen runaway, this 17 year old girl had refused to be dumped in the first place.

Girl Runs During Safe Haven Drop Attempt WMUR November 14, 2008

According to the staff at Methodist Hospital in Omaha, the girl ran off before reaching the emergency room. Her 14-year-old brother stayed. He’s now in state custody, reported television station KETV in Omaha.

Video- Teen Runs After Drop

On Monday the 17th, in the public testimony portion of the Judiciary Committee hearing we heard testimony from Sara Juster of Methodist Hospital. She spoke briefly to the case.

I’m paraphrasing as I don’t have the hearing transcribed yet, but going from my own personal memory and notes, she felt hospital ERs were inappropriate settings for older kids dumps, specifically because hospital staff could not “forcibly restrain” kids being dumped. Kids were able to get away before law enforcement could arrive.

By the time Tuesday the 18th rolled around, we learned these two had an older sister who was not happy with the fact that her mother had tried to dump her siblings. In this interview with her more details came out:

Sister wishes teenagers hadn’t been left Omaha World-Herald November 18, 2008

The 28-year-old sister of two Douglas County teenagers left last week at Methodist Hospital doesn’t think her mother should have used the safe haven law.

The mother told the teens, ages 14 and 17, that they were going to the hospital to visit another sibling, who she said had suffered a serious allergic reaction, the older sister said Monday.

The teens ran from the hospital Thursday when they figured out the real reason.

Police found the 14-year-old boy at a house a half-mile away. His 17-year-old sister still is missing.

To date, the mother herself has not spoken out.

The children’s mother said Monday that the situation was complicated. She said she did not want to speak publicly until her younger daughter has been found.

The 17-year-old girl has been in the juvenile court system. In December 2005, she was placed on probation after being caught shoplifting. Her probation was revoked when she refused to obey a curfew, left home for 10 days and tested positive for drugs, according to court records.

She was sent to the Douglas County Youth Center and a home in Sarpy County for troubled girls, but got into more trouble – skipping curfew and not going to school. A year ago, she spent time at the youth treatment center in Geneva, Neb.

Despite that, she isn’t a bad kid, her older sister said. The 17-year-old held a part-time job and was expected to graduate from high school, her sister said.

We also learn a bit more about what happened to the brother who was caught.

The boy, who is a high school freshman, was taken into foster care but has been placed with relatives, his sister said. He has had no serious behavioral problems, she said.

“He can be annoying sometimes,” his sister said, “but even that doesn’t give you the right to give up on him.”

Not surprisingly, none of the three kids are any too happy with the mother.

After talking to her mother, she still doesn’t understand why the teenagers had to be left at the hospital.

“She knows that we’re mad at her,” she said. “I asked her if she feels guilty, and she does not feel guilty about it.”

By and large Nebraskans and the world for that matter were focusing on the special session. The girl, who remained ‘on the run’ throughout the week the legislature met, was paid little attention.

That said, the Omaha World-Herald stayed on the story and when word came that she had finally contacted other relatives, it too was overshadowed.

Safe-haven runaway contacts her relatives Omaha World-Herald November 20, 2008

A teenager is safe and plans to reunite with relatives after fleeing from an Omaha hospital when she realized her mother was abandoning her and her younger brother under the state’s safe haven law.

Relatives reported they had heard from the 17-year-old runaway Wednesday, the same day a Douglas County Juvenile Court judge worried aloud about the girl’s safety during a court hearing.

“She needs to know she’s not in trouble here,” Judge Elizabeth Crnkovich said. “She needs to come forward so we can take care of her.”

We also get a little more detail about the younger brother, he was found by the police at a relative’s house.

It must have been pretty harrowing to be taken from such into protective custody. One can’t help but wonder what went through his mind, did he feel he had done something wrong? If so, well, ironic that.

It used to be those who abandoned children were the ones taken away by the cops, not kids themselves trying to avoid being abandoned.

Police soon found the 14-year-old at a relative’s house and placed him in protective custody.

Crnkovich ruled Wednesday that the mother wouldn’t immediately be allowed to visit the two children. The judge ruled after a caseworker told her the 14-year-old boy was angry with his mother and didn’t want to see her.

It’s believed to be one of the first times a judge didn’t grant visitation to a parent or guardian who used the safe haven law.

“Can you blame him? Of course he’s angry,” said an adult sister of the two siblings dropped off.

Makes you wonder if the kids could just abandon the mom, you know, drop her off somewhere safe and never have to see her again.

As for the girl herself?

To date I haven’t found any articles saying she’s no longer on the run, though I suppose that could either be a failing on my part or a lack of interest on the part of the media.

Wherever she is tonight, I hope she’s ok.

And no, I won’t count her as a “safe havened” case.

She and her brother did exactly what any kid would, they said no to being abandoned.

“Safe Haven” through the eyes of the kids being dumped is clearly anything but.

(Photo courtesy of the Nebraska Unicameral Information Office)

This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

Update, full video of the vote is available here.

The Omaha World-Herald’s index of all their dump law articles can be found here.

***

Today’s Nebraska Legislative Agenda (link opens a PDF) and Legislative Journal (link opens a PDF) are now online.

As is the slip law copy of the Reissue Revised Statutes of Nebraska, Section 29-121.

On LB 1 (child abandonment continues at 30 days or less safe haven bill), those voting for legalized infant (30 days or less) abandonment were, 43:

Adams
Aguilar
Ashford
Avery
Burling
Carlson
Chambers
Christensen
Cornett
Dierks
Engel
Erdman
Fischer
Flood
Friend
Fulton
Gay
Hansen
Harms
Heidemann
Howard
Hudkins
Janssen
Johnson
Karpisek
Kruse
Langemeier
Lathrop
Lautenbaugh
Louden
McDonald
McGill
Nantkes
Nelson
Pahls
Pankonin
Pirsch
Raikes
Rogert
Stuthman
Wallman
White
Wightman

Those voting against legalized infant (30 days or less) child abandonment, (which would have kept the Nebraska law at legalized “child” abandonment, those 17 or less in practice) were, 5:

Dubas
Kopplin
Pedersen
Preister
Synowiecki

Excused and not voting, 1:

Schimek

This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

From the Governor’s website,

Gov. Heineman Signs Safe Haven Update into Law

LB 1 goes into effect at 12:01am Saturday morning.

(photo: Capitol.org)
“The Sower” by Lee Lawrie, the massive statuary that sits atop the Nebraska Capitol

This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

What can I possibly say that hasn’t already been said already in these 71 posts documenting the ongoing child welfare catastrophe in Nebrasaka?

Honestly, what’s left?

Marley and I have documented abandonment after abandonment of teens, tweens and just plain kids under Nebraska’s original so called safe haven legislation, LB 157. We’re written about the dire circumstances so many of these kids have come from, and the variety of ways in which their already buffeted and torn families have over and over again found services on paper but the doors to access little more than trompe l’oeil.

We’ve brought the stories of the ‘ghost in the machine’ dumps, left uncounted by the Nebraska DHHS, such as the very first child abandoned after the law went into effect. He is not in the official stats as he was left at a police station rather than a state designated dump site.

We’ve covered the self “haven” cases, also not included in the DHHS statistics, the stories of teens who turned themselves in only to be turned away. The self “haven” kids range from a desperate boy from Grand Island who had been living in a storage space with his grandmother and was merely trying to find enough stability to finish school, to a teenage mother honor student who self havened herself and her baby after being kicked out of her mother’s house and claiming her mother took her support checks. She was also turned away.

In all of these cases, we’ve done the best we could to bring the actual voices of the kids themselves to the fore whenever possible.

We’ve written post after post about how aging down the dump law to infants was no solution. We’ve explained the legal, ethical, and child-centered reasons why dump law 2.0 carries with it all the hallmarks of failure.

It does however ensure the silence of the directly affected, for the time being at least.

Infants can’t go on TV or MySpace to talk about how child abandonment affects them, at least they won’t be able to for some years yet.

Infants can’t run away from their abandoners at the hospital dump site rather than endure the consequences of being abandoned.

The next generation of dumped children in Nebraska will be pliable and unable to register their dissent for the foreseeable future.

Already the vote is being heralded as “solving the immediate problem,” when in fact all the vote has done is vote for little kid child abandonment rather than almost all kids, particularly big kids child abandonment.

Nebraska has failed its children a second time.

Already the hastily formed “task force” is being heralded as the way forward, but the voices of the directly affected, people who have been abandoned, have been state wards, or are themselves adoptees are not listed as those with a chair at the table.

The task force will meet three times in December and hear from dozens of experts from across the state — hospital executives, juvenile judges, children’s advocates and social workers.

and

The Children in Crisis Task Force will first meet Dec. 2 at Boys Town in Omaha, an all-day discussion expected to include representatives from Boys Town, Alegent Health, Project Harmony, Creighton University Medical Center and others.

I question how inclusive their definition of “everybody” really will turn out to be.

“Now we’re going to get everybody around the table and come up with some concrete ideas,” McGill said.

In my post about the announcement of the task force, I pointed out at that any working group that does not accept as a bedrock foundation that child abandonment is a bad thing is not going to produce child-centric results.

Sure enough, right on cue, members of the task force are already crowing about how the dump law should be considered a “blessing”:

Members of the task force offered no preliminary plans for changing the system, and they said it’s too soon to know how much any possible changes will cost.

Instead, they talked about how the roundly criticized safe haven law may end up being the best thing that happened for Nebraska families desperate for help. They called it “an opportunity” and “a blessing in disguise.”

Child abandonment is NEVER a “blessing” to the kids themselves.

Only someone with zero empathy for the realities kids face in child abandonment could say such a thing, and yet this is the second time today we’ve seen precisely that.

Further, before LB 157 passed there were efforts to build a task force to study the issues involved they were soundly voted down. (Hopefully Marley will have more time to detail this in a later post.)

Today was not merely a massive defeat for kids, it marked another sad milestone, the whole of the “debate” was between most kid/big kid dumping and little kid dumping. There was no bill nor amendment, ever so much as offered up, that ever once questioned the idea of legalized child abandonment itself.

Thus even had they wanted to, there was no means by which Nebraska State Senators even had the option of voting against still more child abandonment.

It was never a question of whether or not to dump, it was merely a question of who to dump.

LB 1 started with the wrong premise, (what is the right age to abandon a child?) and went downhill from there.

The kids themselves never had a chance.

Today Nebraska state senators were asked to vote between two choices:

• legalized child abandonment encouraged and enabled by the state, and
• legalized child abandonment encouraged and enabled by the state

Not surprisingly, the kids lost.

This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

Final vote on LB 1 (the dump law/safe haven law)

Y-43 (kids up through big kids dumps) – N-5 (little kids dumps), 1 ab.

The bill was on Governor Heineman’s desk by 9:28am central time.

This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

Please see these two action alerts on what can still be done about the Nebraska dump law, there is still time to demand nothing short of a full repeal/age it down to Zero!

• Bastard Nation Action Alert- URGENT: REPEAL NEBRASKA LB 157. STOP CHILD DUMPING!
• Thursday Action Alert

***

Sure enough, the clock’s ticking down and final decisions are being made. Positively sickly media-genic.

Desperate Mom: I May Abandon Son

This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

Please see these two action alerts on what can still be done about the Nebraska dump law, there is still time to demand nothing short of a full repeal/age it down to Zero!

• Bastard Nation Action Alert- URGENT: REPEAL NEBRASKA LB 157. STOP CHILD DUMPING!
• Thursday Action Alert

***

So it’s the night before the final vote, and for those of us who care about what happens to children in relation to the dump laws, we’re left with a horrible realization;

Legalized child abandonment has become over the past nine years not merely fully normative, but unquestioned and unquestionable policy everywhere in the United States except Washington D.C..

The entirety of the “debate” about Nebraska’s dump law took place between varying shades of WHEN, or at what developmental stage child abandonment was a good thing, not IF/WHETHER child abandonment was a good thing.

There was never any question of should we stop the legalized dumping of children? Child abandonment was and remains bedrock policy.

Instead, we have been treated to 7 days of what is the best timing for dumping children?

Clearly to the State Sentators in Nebraska it was never a question of whether legalized child abandonment would be allowed to continue.

Which is why we now sit here, stuck with the fetid corpse of any notion of child welfare embodied by LB 1.

To vote FOR LB 1 is to vote for “little kid” legalized child abandonment (30 days old or younger.)

To vote AGAINST LB 1 is to retain the existing system of “all kids up though big kids” legalized child abandonment (17 years or younger.)

But voting either way is a vote for continued legalized child abandonment.

There is no way to vote against the act of child abandonment itself.

NOT ONE of the state senators to date has introduced any bill or amendment trying to put an end to legalized child dumping in Nebraska.

Clearly, they have learned nothing over the past few months LB 157 has been in effect.

They assuage their disquiet (those that are disquieted that is) by telling themselves the fairy tale that if a child is too young to remember the ACT of being dumped then being dumped doesn’t do damage.

Such is of course complete nonsense, but I suppose it helps them sleep at night.

Again, think about that NOT ONE.

NOT ONE Nebraska State Senator felt disquieted enough to actually add a “age zero point zero” amendment to LB 1. They never even tried.

Even those who with one breath said they opposed the “Safe haven” laws with their next breath said they would support a version of them. These are Legislators who haven’t the strength to take a stand. They haven’t the power of their so called convictions.

Legalized child abandonment was never in question.

This was all a $68,761 vain exercise in trying to find “new and improved” ways to abandon children.

Well way to go Nebraska Legislators.

I’d single you out for shaming, but apparently the rest of the country’s Legislators when it comes to the legalization of dumping kids have lost any notion of child welfare as well, (except of course, Washington D.C. ironically enough, the last real haven kids have left.)

But in many ways, the real “debate” has yet to even begin.

Because dump laws like LB 1 don’t “solve” a damn thing, they only create a whole new set of problems.

Problems Nebraska, like most of rest of the country does its best to avoid. Pesky little unresolved “issues” with the dump laws like:

• the ways the Nebraska “safe haven” law circumvents the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)
• the child’s lifelong needs, such as need for medical, social, genetic, and cultural history
• how the “safe haven” laws can be used to cover crimes such as rape and incest
• how they erode the parental rights of non-abandoning parents or other guardians. Nebraska’s dump law is particularly reprehensible in that it allows pretty much anyone with physical custody to abandon a a child, potentially undermining both parents’ parental rights
• women’s medical needs, as the law encourages lack of prenatal care, hidden pregnancies, and secret births often far from medical care risking both women’s lives and those of their babies
• The lack of counseling, particularly in relation to alternative courses of action to abandonment for those who abandon
• and similarly, the lack of built in support structures and counseling for the kids in the cases of the older kid dumps, merely shipping them along to a foster home is inadequate
• the fact that these laws open the doors to fraud and abuse
• the dump law lacks any structure under which genuine informed consent can be determined, Doubly so as often those abandoning are sometimes in severe crisis, they may be in a state of diminished capacity, hardly conducive to making legal decisions that will alter the lives of all involved permanently
• out of state child dumping, as Nebraska’s date will be higher than some other states, out of state abandonments could still be a factor
• the fact that the act of abandonment does nothing to change the circumstances from which the parent(s) or guardians came to the conclusion that dumping was the best option, poverty, domestic violence, housing problems, mental health conditions, etc.
• the dump laws can be utilized in inter-family disputes, custody disputes, and as a tool of revenge
• how such laws often undermine predetermined traditional revocation periods in adoptions and thus undermine traditional concepts of parental consent
• the fact that “border babies” abandoned at hospitals often get entangled in “safe haven” stats
• and the failures and shortcomings of the statistics of even the states that do bother keeping any, Nebraska has been a study in fudging the numbers.
• the ways in which the dump law forces hospital workers into becoming agents of and acting on behalf of the state, and the lack of liability protections for them
• how once a child is dumped the state is set up in an adversarial stance in relation to the parents or guardians, rather than a stance that enables familial reunification and support
• the ways in which parents or guardians are often kept in the dark, unaware of the child’s status, after a child is legally abandoned, making ongoing involvement difficult even when desired
• how lack of specified communications mechanisms about upcoming hearings etc can cause parents to default and lose their parental rights
• the fact that unsafe, even deadly abandonments continue on (at roughly the same pace, see the California Open section on page 3 of the Bastard Nation Nebraska dump law testimony) despite the dump laws, and that such acts are committed by some women who claim to have been fully aware of the laws at the time
• the lifelong anguish that kids themselves have to live with daily, knowing they were abandoned as a child
• How such laws foster and encourage a sense of shame, personal failure, and ostracization for womyn pregnant non-consentually, or in circumstances that in some way are deemed ‘not measuring up’ to the two parent, house with the white picket fence fantasy of how ‘real’ pregnancy is ‘supposed to be’
• For the older kids Nebraska has now collected a plethora of issues are not only still paramount, but many will be ongoing, perhaps lasting throughout their lifetimes. They must not be forgotten or lost in the bureaucracy
• And in the same vein, the older kids who became entangled with some aspect of the Nebraska “safe haven” social experiment who for one reason or another were rejected and thus left off the official DHHS count, these ‘ghost in the machine’/”attempted” dumps and self “havens” are in so many ways ALREADY forgotten.

and numerous other concerns, the list just goes on and on, and on and on, and on.

The Nebraska legislature can either deal with those concerns tomorrow, by introducing and passing an “Age it down to zero” bill, create a full repeal bill come January, or, they like almost all the rest of the country can deal with such from here on in, one ‘oh shit we never thought of that!’ at a time.

This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

Please see these two action alerts on what can still be done about the Nebraska dump law, there is still time to demand nothing short of a full repeal/age it down to Zero!

• Bastard Nation Action Alert- URGENT: REPEAL NEBRASKA LB 157. STOP CHILD DUMPING!
• Thursday Action Alert

***

Looks like between now and the January session, a subset of Legislators with a variety of other “experts and children’s advocates” will be working to retool some of Nebraska’s children’s services in relation to the dump law.

We saw many hints that this was coming in Monday’s hearing of the Judiciary Committee. State Senator Brad Ashford who Chairs the committee repeatedly turned to witnesses during the public testimony and asked them to come up with “plan” over the next 60 days insisting, (to paraphrase, as I do not have the direct quote transcribed) we’re just Legislators, what do we know?

One really has to wonder whether any adults who were abandoned as kids, former state wards, and adoptees are going to be part of this process or whether it will simply be dominated by precisely the kinds of voices we heard at Monday’s Judiciary Committee hearing. (With one exception, Lyman Wostrel.)

Maybe rather than starting out from the point of deciding what’s best for kids in these positions, they would do well to actually listen directly to those who have been in these positions themselves.

Oh, but wait, other than the first generation of kids who were dumped in Nebraska, there are almost no “safe haven” kids old enough to speak about their own interests. After all, the first of the dump laws passed in Texas a mere nine years ago. So the voices of direct experience when it comes to dump laws, other than Nebraska’s dumped teens are at their oldest, nine year olds.

No doubt that would make for interesting task force meetings.

In any case, here’s today’s Omaha World-Herald article announcing the formation of the new task force, At-risk children getting new attention:

Six state senators and more than two-dozen experts and children’s advocates soon will try to craft new legislation to help the state’s at-risk children.

A new task force to be headed by State Sen. Amanda McGill of Lincoln was announced today.

Other senators involved: Annette Dubas of Fullerton, Tim Gay of Papillion, Gwen Howard of Omaha, Arnie Stuthman of Platte Center and Dave Pankonin of Louisville.

Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha, while not a member of the task force, will be involved as well, McGill said.

Perhaps rather than fully reinventing the wheel, they would care to spend some time looking through the Nebraska Children’s Behavioral Task Force report I first stumbled across mentioned here, Teens dumped in Nebraska: We all need to pay attention.

For that matter the Nebraska DHHS Research and Statistical Data page makes for some interesting late night reading. I’m certainly not suggesting Nebraska DHHS is the end all and be all, I’m merely pointing out that at least some basic data collection is preexisting.

Here are some bios of the “task force” Legislative members:

Sen. Amanda McGill (D*)

Sen. Annette Dubas (D*)

Sen. Tim Gay (R*)

Sen. Gwen Howard(D*)

Sen. Arnie Stuthman (R*) (Author of, and foremost supporter of Nebraska’s dump bill)
Sen. Dave Pankonin (R*)

Sen. Brad Ashford (R*)

What Nebraska does not need is a ‘blue ribbon task force on how to find new and improved ways to abandon babies.

What it needs is and actual working group that first and foremost decouples getting families or women help from the act of child abandonment, as the ‘cost’ of accessing services should never be the child’s permanent loss of family, context, and origins.

Any working group serious about child welfare has to start from the premise that child abandonment is bad, not good, and not something to be promoted and enabled by the state. Any ‘task force’ that fails to start there is building upon a shattered foundation, and is by it’s very nature not addressing the legislation from a child centric point of view.

***

* Note this section from the Ballotpedia entry on the Unicameral and party affiliation:

Non-partisan

Members are selected in nonpartisan elections. Rather than separate primaries held to choose Republican, Democratic, and other partisan contenders for a seat, Nebraska uses a single nonpartisan primary election, in which the top two vote-getters are entitled to run in the general election. There are no formal party alignments or groups within the Legislature. Coalitions tend to form issue by issue based on a member’s philosophy of government, geographic background, and constituency. However, almost all the members of the legislature are affiliated with the state affiliate of either the Democratic or the Republican party and both parties explicitly endorse candidates for legislative seats. The unofficial partisan makeup of the Nebraska Legislature is 31 Republicans, 15 Democrats, and 3 Independents.

This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

Please see these two action alerts on what can still be done about the Nebraska dump law, there is still time to demand nothing short of a full repeal/age it down to Zero!

• Bastard Nation Action Alert- URGENT: REPEAL NEBRASKA LB 157. STOP CHILD DUMPING!
• Thursday Action Alert

***

This is just a quick post, adding a copy of my letter to the Nebraska legislators that was e-mailed out today to the site.

Subject- LB 1, will you submit an alternative bill?

Dear Senator,

I am writing you again to encourage you to support nothing short of full and permanent repeal of Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment law.

In practice, due to the constrains of the special session the most expedient way to effect an end to child dumping in Nebraska would be to age the so called “Safe Haven” law down to Zero point Zero (0.0).
Right now kids need a genuine advocate, a State Senator willing to understand that LB 1 encourages child abandonment and child abandonment is never good for kids. Barring the unforeseen, tomorrow Nebraska legislators will vote for a second round of legalized child abandonment, only this time, the victims of such will be too young to speak out on their own behalf.

As things stand right now, there is no alternative to LB 1 other than leave LB 157 as it currently stands. Kids need a better alternative.

They need a bill aged down to Zero point Zero, a bill that would effectively stop child legalized child abandonment in Nebraska.

They need a State Senator willing to submit a bill that ends legalized child abandonment.

Would you please thoughtfully consider being that advocate?

Nebraska’s Attorney General, Jon Bruning, has left the door open Constitutionally for a Zero point Zero bill, as documented in Monday’s Legislative Journal:

Therefore, during the First Special Session, the Legislature may lower the maximum age of covered children to whatever age it chooses, or not at all.

(Emphasis added..)

Before you dismiss the idea, listen to the words of Nebraska’s first generation of legally dumped kids, their words, and “hysterically begging” their parents not to abandon them are what those 30 days and under might say about the act of legalized child abandonment, if only they could:

“I don’t want anything to happen to kids like it happened to me”

“I’ll be good — I’ll be good, I promise,”

“Please don’t leave me”

All kids, regardless of age, deserve better than this.

Legalized Abandonment laws are no solution, they only create more problems.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Lauren Sabina Kneisly
co-author of Children of the Corn (http://cornkids.blogspot.com/)

[personal contact information removed]

Finally, I should add one other important voice of the directly affected, another voice from Nebraska’s first generation of dumped kids. See: Another dump, and the small voice of a dumped boy, “**choose me** I’m so damn lonely.”

This is the latest in a series of posts I have done criticizing Nebraska’s legalized child abandonment laws. You can find my earlier posts via my Nebraska tag.

***

Please see these two action alerts on what can still be done about the Nebraska dump law, there is still time to demand nothing short of a full repeal/age it down to Zero!

• Bastard Nation Action Alert- URGENT: REPEAL NEBRASKA LB 157. STOP CHILD DUMPING!
• Thursday Action Alert

***

It’s taken a bit of time, but the Nebraska legislature’s Tuesday’s Legislative Journal (link opens a PDF) is now online. It details much of process LB 1 (i.e. the legalized child abandonment bill/”safe haven” bill) has undergone after Monday’s hearing before the Judiciary Committee with public testimony.

Readers will also find the headcounts on the votes from Tuesday there.

In related news, Thursday’s (i.e. today’s) Legislative Journal (link opens a PDF) is also online. The legislature met today from 9am until 10:17am.

Readers can find the full special session’s worth of Legislative Journals here.

(Photo courtesy of the Nebraska Unicameral Information Office)