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.

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Tragically, at the moment there is only one place in the United States that infants are protected from State enabled child abandonments, Washington DC.

Only there can every newborn rest assured that being dumped is not ok, not state encouraged, and never legal.

How could it have come to this?

Over the past nine years the dump laws have spread across the country like a cancer. State after state has fallen to the siren calls of the dump marketers, seduced by false promises of ‘no more dumpster babies’, or that these laws would become some form of a magical panacea, somehow “saving” both newborns and their mothers as well.

In state after state, in the period of time before the vote, a ‘dumped baby crisis’ almost always seemed to materialize. So legislators jumped to a reaction rather than a response, they rammed through dump laws with little understanding of the consequences.

Those most directly affected, the kids themselves, and (in most states) anonymous abandoners had no voice, no means to speak to their long term needs and what the law would do.

Anyone who dared raise a criticism or objection to legalized child dumping, often adult adoptees, child welfare advocates, and those who actually work with womyn in desperate circumstances were instantly painted as inhuman monsters who would rather find dead babies.

Likewise, in state after state legislators set common sense aside, lest they too be tarred as those wanting baby corpses, or as those voting for dead babies. Dump law opponents were given the usual set of “so when did you stop beating your wife” sorts of questions.

Unfortunately, the reasons for opposing legalized child abandonment are complex, nuanced, and rarely soundbyteable. Professional dump marketeers waving pictures of cuddly babies and making overly simplistic unburdened by evidence propagandistic arguments along the lines of (the compulsory pregnancy advocates’ line) “live baby good dead baby bad” shouted down voices of reason.

Never mind the fact that the mythical “dead baby” alluded to by the dump law advocates was likely never headed toward death in the first place. Yes, there are dead babies. But to claim the two poles are “safe haven” or dumpster misses reality.

The womyn with the wherewithal to utilize the dump law, who packs up her baby to drive him or her across town to the hospital is not the same womyn as the womyn who tiptoes over to the dumpster a few blocks from her apartment to deposit a trash bagged bloody bundle.

The hospital abandoner under other circumstances may have been able to connect with a program or a relative, or even a traditional (non state anonymized) adoption plan. She wants her kid to be ok. Trash bag abandoner on the other hand?

There remains no evidence what-so-ever that these laws reach her.

She is often in a crisis situation, sometimes has been in denial of her pregnancy, and in her panic is often merely her own version of just trying to make it all go away. She is in a severe mental health crisis, no amount of spending on PSAs is going to touch her right that moment. Up until the moment of birth she may not have ever acknowledged her own pregnancy. She’s not looking for a program, or to a law, or to a hospital with surveillance cameras all around, she’s looking for a T-shirt to mop up the blood before someone sees it.

Add in a rural component of having to go to a hospital where neighbors might see you, or other circumstances such as lack of access to transportation and the bottom line is state approved dump sites make a lovely fantasy, but they reach those who are open to such already. They’re not going to reach those who feel so trapped that they commit acts of desperation.

While dump marketers can trot out former abandoners doing their court ordered community service with their kitchen table organizations who on cue with give the soundbyte, “but of course I would have used the safe haven had I known about it,” hindsight is cheap and easy. Even cheaper and easier when you’re trying to get your judge off your back. They can only speak for themselves, not other womyn in similar circumstances. I don’t presume to know what they would or would not have done, but what I do know is that for some law or no law the desperation clearly continues.

Abandoned infants and dead babies have not disappeared with the passage of the 50th state’s dump law. Dump laws are never going to “clean up” 100% of the problem. In Nebraska, not a single one of the kids was facing down danger. That would be if anything a 100% failure rate, by the criteria of whether or not the law is protecting kids from immediate harm. Which means it’s all the more important to weigh carefully the harm dump laws cause.

(For example, here’s an important question that remains unanswered: prior to dump laws being passed were prosecutors often utilizing their discretion, but after a dump law is enacted are womyn being penalized much harder? Do these these womyn end up bearing the brunt of the state’s anger when the law fails to work? A scholarly study of the outcomes and sentences womyn have received both before and after dump laws would be a very useful thing right about now.)

Still, dump law marketers bemoan the lack of funding (often into their own programs) for ever escalating dump law publicity, and with each dead baby found they call for yet more funding, insisting that if only everyone was “educated” about their law the baby corpses would stop. Some state have even put ‘how to dump a baby’ programs into school curriculums as part of their ever escalating attempt to teach womyn how to abandon babies.

Dead babies must not serve as fodder for an ever needy marketing maw. Yet that’s exactly what has happened.

When it came to the state by state legislative battles, those who work with both kinds of abandoners, those with expertise, experience and yes adoptees themselves went unheeded.

Worse, as those most directly affected had no voice (in part by the very nature of the fact that an infant cannot politically advocate on their own behalf) legislators,, media, and others saw no down side to passing the laws. They saw no harm. They didn’t understand or refused to understand that the long lasting effects of the dump laws could actually cause lasting harm to the very people they were passed in the name of. The dump laws are short sighted.

Nebraska of course has IDed dumps, but in other states, abandoners are anonymous. This permanently strips the dumped kids of any genetic, social, cultural, or familial history. A dumpling can be “saved!” via dump law at age 1, only to suffer years later due to lack of genetic information such as breast cancer in the familial history. I’m loathe to make the medical argument as the issues therein are complex. That said, I think it is fair to say that shortsightedness is a hallmark of the dump laws, and that any definition of baby “saving” has to be carefully examined in the cold hard light of lifelong consequences of the state’s actions on/against such a vulnerable population.

Kids need long term answers, and at the very moment they are least able to protect their own interests (being a newborn and all) the state abandons it’s own role as acting on behalf of the child’s welfare, instead becoming a key participant in the abandonment process itself. If ever kids needed the state to step up and help them, it is when they are completely defenseless. But rather coming to the child in need’s aid, “Safe haven” states are central to the act of cutting access, information, and family away from the child permanently.

Let me make this as clear as I can, child abandonment is NEVER a good thing. It should not be enabled. It should not be held up as a positive outcome. It does lasting damage to everyone it touches, the kids most of all. Rather than working to stamp out child abandonment, the dump laws turn every last shred of child welfare best practices on their head, advocating womyn do precisely the thing that child welfare advocates have tried to prevent. Child dumping is always failure. It doesn’t matter if the name is prettied up, or if it’s done under the bright fluorescent lighting of hospitals, child dumping is evidence that things are really, REALLY broken.

Legalized child dumping does NOTHING to change those root causations, instead it is the state desperately trying to plaster over the place on the wall where the things that make us uncomfortable intruded, however briefly. ‘Sure she was in a desperate pregnancy with no money and no way to afford another child, but that’s “dealt with” now’. Not so much.

As state after state fell, caught up in the delusion that these laws were somehow going “fix” things, those of us who empathize with the kids knew that the consequences to the kids would become apparent, but only later, as every other state has only applied the law to kids much younger.

Nebraska short circuited that 18 year wait time while the dumped kids grew to age of majority. By passing the older kid dump law and by not making the dumpers anonymous Nebraska suddenly provided for the first time a sad window into the lives and circumstances of both the parents and guardians and the kids themselves. Nebraska is in so many ways a very special case due to the unique nature of its law.

But what it has shown us is precisely what those of us who have tracked dumps as best we can across the country (as most states laws make the dumper anonymous) have known for a long time now. Utilizing legalized child abandonment systems is often an act of desperation. These are people who by and large do not want to lose their kids, but feel trapped, and have nowhere else to turn.

Legalized baby dumping may happen as a result of poverty, or it may be utilized to cover abuse, domestic violence, or even incest. Dumping the baby makes the ‘evidence’ go away, but it does nothing to change the circumstances that lead to the act of dumping. Having dump sites available may actually function as a means to keep womyn in dangerous situations, as now instead of having to deal with a pregnancy and a child, the dump laws forms a means by which abusers can simply continue to hide everything going on.

The dump laws encourage womyn to hide and keep secret their pregnancies, avoid prenatal care, and deliver in secret, far from medical care, risking their very lives in the process. They bet their very lives, holding out hope that if they can just get the kid to a dump site no one need ever know.

With the American health care crisis, many womyn may not even be aware of what resources could help them through a pregnancy or keeping the child. Some may simply find themselves pregnant and panic not knowing how they would afford to give birth in a hospital, much less raise a child. Lack of information and economic pressures both perceived and real, may lead womyn into incredibly dangerous circumstances.

The States, rather than working to educate, destigmatize, and actually connect womyn with what programs and funding do exist, are instead maintaining the stigma and shame basis, insisting that it is better that a womyn deliver alone in secret and utilize the dump than access medical care and connect with existing programs.

The existence of the dump laws takes the pressure off the States to actually help families in need.

Just dump the newborn and go on back to your circumstances. The kid, (in most states) now stripped of all genetic, cultural, social, and family history, is a tabla rasa perfect candidate for adoption. The adopters get a kid with no history and no family of origin to come looking for him or her later. The State now that it has decoupled the child from any notion of their medical history can present the kid as “no known problems”, and collect their federal “adoption bonus” for placing the kid. And the kid themselves… well, they’re supposed to sit down shut up and be grateful for a lifetime that they weren’t dumpstered.

Which for some of the kids, if they turn out anything like other adoptees, begins to fall apart over time.

“Be grateful you’re not dead,” while the constant refrain used to shout down adoptee’s genuine concerns is ultimately a very poor excuse. Doubly so when one begins to look at whether or not dumped kids were ever really in danger in the first place. The Nebraska DHHS concluded that not one of the older kids dumped was ever in any immediate danger.
We have no determination of immanent danger for the anonymous states, but I would be willing to bet the parents and guardians who have abandoned the kids in other states loved them too, loved them so much that they turned to the final avenue they had open to them, which was of course just as in regular adoptions, sold to original parents as some sick form of gateway “to a better life for your child.” (See my previous dismantling of the “better life” marketing pitch here.)

Ultimately these laws betray the real long term interests of both womyn and children. The laws cause further harm, and prevent families from accessing genuine help.

Now as Nebraska legislators take up the law in the special session, they have before them a rare opportunity, a second chance to do what’s right.

Repeal the dump law, age it down to never.

Ensure that never again will a child be “legally abandoned” in Nebraska.

In short they have the opportunity to make Nebraska a real haven for kids and their families, a place where kids don’t fear going to the hospital because rather than hospitals being places of health and healing they have been transformed by legislation into the places parents go to get rid of their kids. Kids, of any age need stability and support, not uncertainty and abandonment.

While Nebraska legislators up for re-election ran their campaigns this fall, the kids kept pouring in. Kids after kid, and yet from the legislature, there was little more than foot shuffling and uncomfortable looks, coupled with promises of getting to it come January. While the legislators felt they could wait, Kids, speaking nationally here, can’t. They can’t wait another day for the doors to the Nebraska dumping grounds to be closed.

Aging down (dump law 2.0) just means older kids are off the hot seat, if they made it to age X (whatever Nebraska legislators ultimately decide) they’re in the clear. But for kids younger than the cut off date, whether 3 days or 30, or four months of even a year, the dump law “returns department” doors would remain open.

That’s a damn sad state of affairs.

In Washington DC dumping a child is never ok. Dumping a child is not legalized. It’s not enabled by the government, nor encouraged. ‘Child dumping 101/how to abandon a baby’ is not in the school curriculum.

When it comes to “safe haven” laws, DC is the only haven kids have left.

DC represents one last little island, surrounded by the rising tide of the normalization of child abandonment in America.

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.

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Children of the Corn
A new blog in support of Repealing legalized child abandonment laws and chronicling the Nebraska dump law case study.

Reporting, Theory, and Opinion on Legalized Child Dumping in Nebraska

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As Marley Greiner (who blogs the Daily Bastardette) and I were both detailing the Nebraska disaster, we came to the conclusion that combining our shared blogging of the history into one common resource would be helpful to others researching the still unfolding mess. She and I both support nothing short of full repeal of all legalized child abandonment laws.

Our posts to date have often overlapped and referenced one another, going forward, we will likely each bite off separate pieces to tackle, or write from different angles about the same set of events.

For example, I am relying on her reporting this evening about the two latest teens who when taken to a Nebraska hospital ditched their dumper and ran-

BORN TO RUN! TWO ESCAPE SAFE HAVEN MOM

Children of the Corn will be the repository for our interwoven coverage from here on.

To be perfectly frank, I was honoured to be invited to join her. She and I are old friends. we have both spent years working, researching, and writing in support of adoptee rights and about the seemingly unending abuses kids and parents have endured in the name of what often passes for child welfare both in this country and internationally.

I’ve linked across to her coverage many times, but she’s long overdue a proper introduction for my readers here.

(This is one of my favourite older pictures of her.)

Marley’s background in American history brings a wealth of experience to her adoptee advocacy work.

As does her time spent abroad. As but one of many examples, her careful research and chronicling of the deaths of so many of the Russian adoptees, NIKTO NE ZABYT — NICHTO NE ZABYTO, Nobody is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten, is an incredible resource.

Marley is a maintainer of memory.

To all this, add her ongoing work and years of experience as Executive Chair and Co-founder of Bastard Nation and it readily becomes clear why she’s the right person to team up with. BN has been one of the strongest most consistent voices against all dump laws, from the very dawning of them back 9 years ago. Year after year BN fought the dump laws, building in the testimonies given state after state, perhaps the most clear articulation of why the dumps laws must be repealed. She is also the creator of the Adoptee Rights News Blog.

It’s her passion and unflinching tenacity that makes this a natural pairing. She through the years has shown again and again her willingness to turn over the rocks, and not turn away at what she finds crawling about beneath. Her realistic view of the current state of child welfare and adoption is a vitally needed counterweight voice in opposition to the so often Vaseline smeared lenses the adoption industry, dump marketeers and others would prefer we all look though.

When legislators or media fall for the marketing, Marley has been there time and again, bringing forth the facts that undercut the lies.

She’s been more than willing to do the legwork and follow through to look at what the kids themselves are really experiencing; homelessness, being passed around in the endless circle jerk of referrals to nowhere, kids who end up living on the streets, abused, even murdered. (Herein of course, I’m speaking more broadly, not merely about Nebraska.)

Perhaps most pertinent to the Nebraska situation though, is that for a number of years now, since 2001, Marley has been the creator and sole editor of the Baby Dump News, “a weekly e-chronicle of newborn abandonment, infanticide, safe haven legislation, and related issues.” E-mailed out week after week, very little of the BDN is online, but the 2007 index can be found here.

Marley has been case by case, article by article tracking abandonments and child dumps for years. In short, she has been nose down in the details of the dump laws for about forever.

She is also a board member of and writer for the (Columbus, Ohio) Free Press. She and I both share interests as activists and researchers writing about issues of womyn’s autonomy and those would impose their interpretation of theonomy.

When it comes to the things kids are enduring, from denial of equality under law to state encouraged abandonment, she understands the critical importance of holding those responsible’s feet to the fire, as well as both looking and working systemically at how interlocking aspects of systemic structures are broken and failing kids and families.

In short, I’m damn proud to team up with her. Honoured actually, that she wants to place my work alongside hers.
I hope regular readers here will understand the vital contribution she has been making and continues to make, both in relation to the Nebraska situation and dump laws more broadly, but also in her many years of tireless work on behalf of all dumped kids sitting alongside her work on for adopted people and their families.

If there’s anyone who should be listened to at this critical juncture in the Nebraska process, it’s Marley.

All of this of course, is a mere thumbnail sketch. Marley is all this and much more. But mostly she’s got a wicked sense of humour, historical perspective, and a particular way with penning a poem.

This is the CotC announcement she has added to Bastardette tonight, feel free to pass it along to others who are researching the Nebraska mess:

Lauren Sabina Kneisly (Baby Love Child) and Bastardette are happy to announce the posting of our new blog: Children of the Corn: Reporting, Theory, and Opinion on Legalized Child Dumping in Nebraska.

Since we were both writing so much on the topic of Nebraska child dumping law, LB 157, we decided it would be a good idea to put our work together in an easy-to-access format. The blog is a repository of our Nebraska writing, in chronological order, since the first “legal” abandonment took place in September. It is intended as a resource for those researching so-called “safe haven” or “Baby Moses” laws, Nebraska LB 157 , adoptee rights activists, adoption reformers, child welfare advocates, bastards, legislators, the media, and those who are just plain disgusted.

We may occasionally add the work of another blogger or scholar. Over the next week or so we add more links and other resources.

We will continue to post our Nebraska blogs on our individual blogs as well.

CHILDREN OF THE CORN

http://cornkids.blogspot.com

please distribute freely!

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.

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Another day, another out of state dump, this time, a boy from Florida.

The AP has an article out, just a couple hours old at this point, 11-year-old boy is 31st Nebraska ‘safe haven’ case.

 Todd Landry, director of children and family services for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the boy’s father left him at Boys Town National Research Hospital on Wednesday afternoon.

The latest Nebraska DHHS summary of the officially counted dump cases (link opens a PDF) lists the boy as being from Miami-Dade County, FL. How he was transported to Nebraska remains to be seen.

***

Also, here on the eve of the beginning of the special session, Nebraska DHHS has compiled a chart detailing some basic statistics on their official count (link opens a PDF) now at 31 though the chart only covers the first 30 .

The chart while not counting a number of attempted “safe haven” and self “haven” cases, is still an incredibly useful tool.

For example, we learn 11 of the 30 were either adopted/guardianship or relative placements, what I had been terming “returns department” dumps. 17 of the kids have been previously or currently are state wards.

28 of the kids have endured prior allegation(s) of abuse neglect.

Perhaps most importantly, NONE of these kids were at risk of immediate harm.

The chart shows check marks alongside all 30 kids as assessed as safe from immediate harm, though the tabulation at the bottom of the page reads 29 instead of all 30. If the raison d’etre for the dump law was to protect kids from immediate harm, the Nebraska case study shows a unanimous failure.

27 of the kids had experienced some level of prior mental health services. 7 had had prior mental health treatment listed as “higher than outpatient”.

27 of the kids came from single parent homes.

As to the dumps themselves, 25 of them came in on weekends after 4pm. (this was precisely the pattern Marley/Bastardette and I were noting.)

Currently

• 11 are in foster care
• 8 are in a relative’s home
• 6 are in the temporary emergency shelter
• 2 are in hospitals
• 1 is in a group home (* see below)
• 1 is in a treatment group home
• and one kid has returned to their own home

Going by the check marks on the chart, 9 are classified as “Black, 1 is classified as “White/Native”, and 20 are classified as “White”, and “. (The summary at the bottom of the chart says “8 Black, 1 White/Native, 20 White” which only adds up to 29, not 30.)

(I’m unclear on how the Staton kids are being classified, apparently as mostly “White” though that has been an important question, see my piece Nebraska- the Staton abandonment and the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) for further discussion of such and how the Staton abandonment raises questions of Nebraska’s ICWA obligations.)

Both Marley/Bastardette and I have been working up our own tabulations statistically, particularly as relating to the number of child dumps that Nebraska is refusing to count in the official tally.

The official count now stands at 31, our count now stands at 42. (See my earlier piece Nebraska- another ghost in the machine dump (unoffical total 41, the official count reaches 30 for further details.) roughly 1/4 of the abandonment cases are not included in the state’s tally.

We had been tracking many of the same kinds of details about the case studies (whether in the official count or not,) particularly some of the outcomes on the out of state dumps and the 18 year olds.

Allow me a few examples to scratch the surface of just a few of the more interesting ‘undercounts’ and possibly incorrectly tabulated:

• The plight of the 18 year old uncounted Grand Island self “haven” boy- Therapist: Safe-haven hubbub shows families need respite help
• * The Iowa dumpee who after being shipped back to Iowa by Nebraska (a “return to sender” out of state dump) went on to become a teen runaway, Girl now a runaway after safe-haven stint and ‘Safe haven’ runaway found, police say. Being 14, she was included in the official count, (she was the initial out of state dump case.) Nebraska shipped her back home to Iowa ASAP so as to avoid the precedent of out of state kids being able to land in the Nebraska system. You tell me, does it sound like she got the help she needed? As I don’t see ‘teen runaway’ under the options listed in the “current placement” column, she is clearly being counted as something else. The second article says she had been ” placed in a home for troubled youths” prior to running away, so perhaps she is still inaccurately being counted as being in a “group home?”
• Here, for example is yet another 18 year old abandonee left out, not in the official tabulation- Two more teenagers dropped off.

The list of examples goes on and on. My point is, many are not even in the stats and of those that are, Nebraska may for example think the Iowa girl is still in a group home outcome when in fact she’s been a runaway.

It’s a disaster, and the actual follow up with the kids seems to not fully be in place even on the 42 cases to date.

Perhaps Nebraska legislators would care to deal with the mess they’ve already created before they go creating yet still more (and a whole new class of) dumped kids?

Aging down to newborns under dump law 2.0 cannot and will not deal with the fundamental flaws and problems inherent to all legalized child abandonment laws.

***

Repeal the dump laws now.

Nebraska’s record of failure is no foundation to build upon.

***

Addendum- just as I came to the end of this post, I ran across the Omaha World-Herald’s piece, There are common threads in haven drop-offs. Apparently they’ve been crunching the numbers provided by the Nebraska DHHS as well.

According to the article:

HHS officials provided the analysis, along with a letter, to state senators Wednesday.

Here are the key sentences:

Nebraska’s law was intended to protect children in immediate danger of being harmed, Landry said in the letter to senators. The HHS analysis found no threat of immediate harm in any of the 30 cases.

and

“The role of the state’s child welfare system is to protect children who are fundamentally unsafe,” Landry said. “For children or youth who are otherwise safe, it is not the role of the state to intervene in a family’s life.”

So the only question that remains is, will Nebraska state legislators listen to those most intimately acquainted with the dump law;

• the kids themselves
• child welfare experts
• Nebraska’s own DHHS
• parents and other relatives
• adoptee rights experts
• First Nations peoples’ ICWA concerns
• etc

or will they continue on, closing their eyes, covering their ears, hell bent upon their fantasy of making the dump law “work?”

One can only hope cooler heads will prevail.

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.

***

Repeal the dump laws now.

Every single day the dump laws remain on the books is another day of failure.

Yes, a special session should be called, but not to age down and ensure the disaster continues, just against younger kids.

The special session should be called to do one thing and do it right, put a stop to legalized child abandonment in Nebraska.

Stop the bleeding. Ensure that no more kids and families are going to put through this ordeal.

Then after the door is shut, begin to tackle the root problems.

It’s time to decouple “getting help” from loss of family and custody.

One can absolutely support providing help to families in crisis while SIMULTANEOUSLY opposing dump laws.

In fact, such is the more humane position, as the “cost” of getting help must not be a kid’s family and world. No kid should ever have to endure such. Whether a kid can remember being dumped personally, or “merely” has to live with the consequences of being dumped as a baby for the rest of their lives, enduring abandonment is never good for kids.

There are now 41 kids who have undergone permutations of the Nebraska dump law child welfare fiasco. There may be more still by the time the special session finally concludes, (and who knows whether a change in the law will even come at the conclusion of such.) But while legislators should be ashamed of the crass and often arbitrary way they played with these kids lives, the problems these families face are more pressing than any blame game.

Those kids and those families are going to need real solutions. Not blather, not outsourcing to “faith-based” quackery, not empty promises, and most of all, not endless referrals around in circles to “help” that never seems to exist in practice. Concrete solutions.

Nebraska politicians made this particular legislative mess, now they owe it to the victims of such to enable genuine access to what they need.

Separately, both in Nebraska and nationally, real lasting solutions for kids and families both approaching and in crisis are going to have to be crafted. Preventative care. Spaces where parents and guardians can take a “time out” without fear of losing their custodial rights. Access to genuine mental health services (which yes, means tackling the health care crisis in America.) Etc.

These families live at the intersection of many systemic problems. The child dumps are but symptoms of deep long neglected systemic problems. The kids are left paying the price.

Dump laws are no solution.

They only create further problems that last lifetimes.

Nothing less than full repeal.

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.

***

I’m going to work chronologically, (yet in inverse order from the Nebraska DHHS safe haven page’s latest press release.)

Firstly, there was another uncounted in the official tabulation dump the Sunday night:

In addition, there was a report that the safe haven law may have been used in Lincoln last night regarding an 18-year old. DHHS has investigated and confirmed with the Lancaster County Attorney’s Office that a juvenile petition will not be filed in this instance. As a result, Landry said DHHS does not consider this a use of the safe haven law, but is providing assistance to the young woman on a voluntary basis.

Once again, another 18-year old fell down the dump slot, 18 being that age that Nebraska won’t provide foster care etc to, nor count as an official dump, yet still legally classifies as a “child”, not yet an adult.

KCCI has a report, Another Teen Abandoned In Nebraska. She was another adoptee, “returns department” dump:

The woman told officials at BryanLGH Medical Center West that her daughter, who was adopted, is bipolar and has a learning disability, Assistant Police Chief Jim Peschong said Monday. The girl was left at the hospital at about 11 p.m.

“The adoptive mother says that the daughter refused to take some medication for some conditions that she has,” Peschong said. “She won’t listen to her, can’t control her.”

Marley/Bastardette has a post up about the incident as well, MORE NEBRASKA FIASCO: WOMAN ATTEMPTS TO DUMP ADOPTED DAUGHTER.

Her tabulation of the dumped adoptees, “returns department” dumps to date:

So far, one other dumpee has been confirmed as adopted, 2 others reported (but not confirmed) as kinship adopted. I believe there are more.

Then secondly, yesterday (Monday) morning, a 17 year old boy was abandoned. According to the Nebraska DHHS safe haven page’s latest press release, his mother left him off at Creighton University Medical Center. He is counted as the 30th officially counted dumped kid in the Nebraska DHHS count. (Link opens a PDF)

Both Marley and I have been tracking the number of kids not included in official Nebraska DHHS count as well. She’s found an additional 11 cases of what she’s terming “attempted dumps.”

So DHHS count aside, the kid-centric count, actually stands at at least 41.

As I’ve said before, mine is a Bastard blog. I care about what the kids themselves are experiencing. Some of the uncounted, “unofficially” dumped kids are every bit as separated from the world they once knew as any other counted dumped kid, they just don’t match the state’s dumper criteria or age limit criteria.

Some are self “haven” cases wherein the kids themselves have reached out for help, only to find no “haven” on the other end.

Those 11, roughly 1/4 of all the Nebraska dump cases are rendered invisible. The kids are treated as mere ghosts in the machine, the memories of their dumps kept alive only by those of us who continue to insist, they are no less dumped, they are no less in need.

Yet as Nebraska legislators gather to age down to the next version of dump law failure, a Nebraska dump law 2.0, a full quarter of the cases, a quarter of the dumped kids, will likely never even be considered, because they don’t apparently count.

***

Repeal the dump laws now.

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.

***

Friday an 11 year old girl was left by her mother at Bergan Mercy Hospital. NE DHHS counts her as the 29th kid in the official count.

Be sure to see A Mother’s Story of Trying to Get Help. Note that the girl was originally going to go into an adoption:

The mother in Nebraska’s most recent Safe Haven case speaks out about why she dropped off her eleven year old daughter. It’s another story of a parent who tried to get help, but instead ran into roadblocks.

…

“She was originally supposed to go up for adoption. We were living in Minnesota, I was a young single mother.” Another family was ready to adopt the newborn and take her in, but the girl’s grandmother stepped in.

Once again we come back to what sits in the middle of these cases, guardians feel the only way they can get these kids help is to use the dump laws. The cost of getting a kid the help they need should never be loss of their family. One should not have to surrender parental or guardian rights to gain access to the services necessary to get a kid what they need.

Marley’s got a post up about her, along with updates on both the Indiana and Michigan dump cases.

Also on Friday the full court press media circus kicked in as everyone gears up for the special session.

The lip-flapping-to-fill-the-space-between-the-commericials “Dr. Phil” television show did an hour long dump supportive promo (be sure to catch his “uncensored” commentary here in which he sings the praises of leglaized child abandonment. ) My comment on both the Laura the moralizing hypocrite (link not suitable for minors or workplace reading) insipid blog post and Phil-the-shill show that Marley pointed her readers at can be found here.

Again, I couldn’t make stuff like this up. We are so far into the realm of whacked out fiction I couldn’t write characters like this if I tried. Supposedly “pro-family” morons singing the praises of child dumping, through the looking glass we go.

If you had told me 20 years ago that I would be sitting here, having to explain to people that abandoning children is never a good thing, I never would have believed you. These are things I used to consider self-evident.

But once this latest crop of dump-abandonment propagandists got involved people began to loose track of which way is up and which way is down.

Hint;

• kids not being abandoned=good,
• abandoning kids=bad.
• State enabled and encouraged legalized child dumping=bad, very bad.

Meanwhile back in the real world the Omaha World-Herald had two good pieces today, The Children: Kids suffer sense of abandonment and The Parents: Myth aside, caretakers stay involved. Readers should go take the moment to go across and read the articles.

Once again, up through the cracks we barely hear the actual voice of a dumped kid:

One 12-year-old safe haven boy has posted this message on his MySpace page:”**choose me** Im so damn lonley.”

Finally, see Safe Haven Revision Set for Next Friday.

The law tweeks are on the horizon. Practically guaranteeing that the next set of ‘aged down’ kids will continue to deal with all the problems dump laws create under dump law 2.0.

Meanwhile the demand for full repeal continues on, apparently unheeded.

I don’t want to be sitting here in 6 months having to say “we told you so” all over again, I want the states to stop manufacturing still more dump-related ordeals.

As for the kids already dumped, the damage is done. They’ll be living with such the rest of their lives, unlike certain legislators (in any given state) who simply can, and do, walk away from the messes they made.

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.

***

An 8 year old boy from Indiana was dumped in Nebraska today. He’s the fourth out of state kid dumped into the Nebraska system.

The AP has a piece here- Indiana boy latest Nebraska safe-haven case.

Marley’s got a few more details up on her blog:

NEBRASKA FIASCO CONTINUES: INDIANA MOM DEPORTS SON TO NEBRASKA; CASE UPDATES Thursday, November 06, 2008.

As she points out, other than the Staton case, this 8 year old is the other youngest kid dumped in Nebraska.

The Nebraska DHHS official count (link opens a PDF) has been updated to reflect him. As I continue to point out through, the official count does not include all the kids who have interacted with the Nebraska legalized child abandonment law. See Marley’s chronological account, CHILDREN OF THE CORN: NEBRASKA’S DUMPED GENERATION for a more accurate count.

Legal scholars will no doubt be tied up in knots about whether or not California’s prop. 8 will or will not retroactively affect the pre-existing G/L/B/T marriages. But the bottom line is, if Californians eliminated the right of Queer couples to marry (enshrining such in the California Constitution,) at least some of California’s Queer families’ kids will be treated as “illegitimate.”

For the moment, the ballots are still being counted.

According to a study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, approximately 18,000 same-sex couples had married in California prior to the election. We don’t know the number of kids within those families and whether or not the constitutional amendment will or will not be applied retroactively to those couples and those kids, but the scale of the problem is daunting; the potential creation of thousands of “overnight bastards.”

If the law is applied retroactively, kids in Queer families will be stripped of their status as children of married couples and then reclassified as “illegitimate.”

Even if not applied retroactively, going forward, kids in Queer marriages from this point on in California will be treated as they are in most states as “illegitimate.” Florida and Arizona yesterday ensured that Queer couples’ kids there will not be treated as married couples kids as well.

Few people think of Queer couples’ kids as legally “illegitimate” yet that’s exactly how they are classified in states where Queers are barred by law from marrying. These kids are a huge almost invisible swath of modern bastardy.

While the term “bastard” is no longer in legal usage, it is certainly still in common parlance and I can think of few things more “bastardizing” than having the state dismantle your parents’ marriage via constitutional amendment in the wake of a ballot measure.

In other anti-Queer bastard related election news, Arkansas passed its measure prohibiting Queer couples or straight unmarried couples from adopting or fostering, thus doing an end run around the Arkansas Supreme Court ruling.

Naturally this will screw with parents’ ability to decide who will raise their kids. Take for example, a parent who wanted to place their child with a Lesbian aunt instead of a complete stranger. Now as Queers are legally prohibited from adopting in Arkansas, the aunt is now deemed “unqualified” to adopt, based purely upon the very nature of who and what she is.

Even beyond what these states have done to Queer couples with these insipid homophobic measures, these states are effectively sewing the scarlet “b” on kids raised by Queer couples.

This is one set of “pro-marriage,” “pro-family,” “pro-child” assholes, kids can do without. (Orwell must be spinning in his grave.)

***

(Note that throughout this piece, I use “bastard” (small “b”) as the social convention and “Bastard” (capital “B”) as a means of political expression. See my (capital “B”) Bastard definition over here.)

Also note that I’m Queer. I support Queer Nation’s concept of “full spousal equivalency” rather than “gay marriage.” If you’re really all that interested in my views on such, wander of to my dKos diary over here, though note, my relationship with my ex-wife has changed quite a bit since this piece was written.

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.

***

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been busy the last week or so. While I’ve certainly still been following the latest twists and turns in the Nebraska situation, I haven’t had much time to actually write. Tonight is no exception.

I did however want to point readers across to two critically important pieces Marley has done on her blog, Bastardette:

CHILDREN OF THE CORN: NEBRASKA’S DUMPED GENERATION Saturday, November 01, 2008

and

MEET #25, #26, AND MAYBE #27–AND THAT PESKY 18- YEAR OLD: THE NEBRASKA FIASCO CONTINUES Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Since I last blogged on Oct 29th, even the official Nebraska DHHS count (link opens a PDF) has gone up to 27 kids dumped to date.

But as I’ve been pointing out for some time now, there are a number of situations under which kids have interacted with the law not tabulated in the official count. (Again see my earlier explanations, here and here, of some of those unoffical interactions.)

Marley pointed her readers at an important article, bringing up the plight of the self “havening” boy from Grand Island who has, sure enough, fallen through the cracks. As he was deemed “too old” and as he turned himself over, he is not counted among the official cases (He’s not in the Nebraska DHHS count.)

She saw the gap most recently when she housed the Grand Island teen, who in September, attempted to turn himself in at St. Francis Medical Center under the safe-haven law.

He was over the age of 17 and wasn’t turned in by a parent, so didn’t qualify to enter the Health and Human Services system, Schwan said.

He stayed in her home with Schwan and her family for three weeks, while Schwan tried unsuccessfully to find him placement in various community service programs.

and

Schwan said Grand Island’s safe haven teen was told to leave home by his mother’s boyfriend, had lived for more than a year with his grandmother in an area storage unit and has been in four high schools over the past four years.

“He just wants to finish school,” she said.

Kids like him need a safe place to go — even just temporarily, Schwan said.

The bottom line is, despite attempting to “safe haven” himself, he isn’t even listed among the cases.

Kid after kid is going through the system, some are counted, others like the boy from Grand Island are not.

Yet when legislators go to “fix” their broken law do you think they will even hear about the plight of these kids? They’re nowhere in the stats. They’re off the books. They may as well not even have every existed when it comes to the official stats in relation to the Nebraska legalized child abandonment law.

It’s come down to those of us on the outside to even remind people that kids like this are part of the history of the miserably failed child welfare social experiment in Nebraska.

Despite what the kids are undergoing day in and day out, Nebraska lawmakers and Governor Heineman apparently appear to feel no great urgency to try to deal with the mess of their own creation.

Instead they’ve offered up a ‘compromise’ a mere tweek to the law, offering it up as some kind of “solution”, (or at least a means of getting the attention to shift and die down.) Their inaction and lack of a genuine solution only continues to ensure the kids themselves are the ones who will suffer the consequences of such.

(By way a side notation for new readers, I’ve already explained how the plan to age down Nebraska’s dump law to infants 3 days old or less is no solution to the problem. I’ve taken to referring to such as dump law 2.0. From a genuine child welfare stance their short sighted “solution” is dead on arrival. Kids will continue to endure the harm all dump laws cause, but as the kids will be infants not teens they will be less likely to be able to vocalize the problems they will face until years later.)

***

As always, I continue to call for nothing short of full repeal of all legalized child abandonment laws.

With a little luck, I’ll be back to blogging in more detail very soon.

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.

***

Ironically, just as the excrement really hits the fan, I find myself least able to carve out time for more than this bare bones blogging at the moment.

That said, I’ll write what little I do have time for.

Here are the latest sad additions to the Nebraska dump law casualty count:

• Oct 25th- 12-year old boy from Georgia
• Oct 27th- 15-year old girl
• Oct 28th- 17 year old boy and 15-year old girl.

To my count, this brings the total number of kids who have in some way interacted with the dump law to date, whether counted by Nebraska DHHS or not, to 28. (Again see my earlier explanations, here and here, of how I’ve reached this number.)

By way of providing some detail, Marley Greiner on her blog, Bastardette has been picking up some of the Nebraska blogging over the last few days, particularly relating to the GA abandonment:

Sunday, October 26, 2008

GEORGIA ON MY MIND: ANOTHER OUT-OF-STATE DUMP

Monday, October 27, 2008

GEORGIA ON MY MIND MORNING UPDATE

NEBRASKA SAFE HAVEN: HERDING CATS

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

ON NO! ANOTHER ONE! NEBRASKA FIASCO AD NAUSEAUM

No doubt she will have more as events unfold.

Then today, Nebraska’s Governor Heineman called for a special session (link opens a PDF) of the currently out of session legislature. (Note that some of these legislators would not be around in January when the regular session begins due to being term limited out.) The session is scheduled to begin Friday November 14th.

The revised version of the dump law, what I’ve been referring to as dump bill 2.0 would limit Nebraska’s dump window to infants three days old or younger.

I’ve already written repeatedly about how a 2.0 bill would fail to address the core problems inherent to all dump laws. Take this, from a post I wrote back on Oct 21 (Nebraska attempts to slam to barn door, only creating a new set of problems) when the “agreement” was initially announced:

As I predicted, Nebraska appears to have decided to go to dump law 2.0, the aged down version. Nebraska will still be encouraging child abandonment, just of kids too young to protect their own interests, or speak about the experience of being dumped for some years.

That does not mean these soon to be aged down dumps are less damaging.

Aging down still does nothing about so many of the core problems with the dump laws, parental rights being violated when one parent dumps and the other is out of the loop, the Indian Child Welfare Act violations, the real needs of families, and most importantly, the needs of the dumped kids themselves.

But aging down will ensure that 18 year gap between when a kid is dumped and when they hit age of majority, thus sparing the legislators, but not the kids.

If all the Nebraska legislators do is age down to version 2.0, they’ve sidestepped many issues of substance relating to the dump laws to do mere superficial tinkering, or as I put it, change the shade of lipstick on the pig.

The pig’s still there. It’s a ticking time bomb, that as more dumps happen under the new rules and the dumped kids grow older, a whole new set of problems are slowly going to become apparent, though odds are, just as in other states, they will be dismissed as ‘personal problems’ not problems inherent to the system the dump laws create.

For those of us who genuinely care about the state of child welfare in Nebraska, and want to see the state cease its encouragement of legalized child abandonment, we now appear to have just over 2 weeks to encourage Nebraska legislators to come to understand the inherent flaws in even an ‘aged down’ version of a dump law, and instead encourage them to embrace the full repeal position.

Nothing less than full repeal of Nebraska’s encouragement of child abandonment will help these kids.

It’s past time to detangle any version of a dump bill from what needs to be a second bill supporting access to for example increased access to mental health care and genuine support for families in crisis.

Repeal the dump law once and for all, then set about doing the difficult job of creating a genuine and meaningful safety net for kids and their families.

Entangling these two separate issues, legalized child abandonment and access to programs for families in crisis is a conflationary tactic. It is absolutely possible to get families in need real help without it ‘costing’ them their family ties or custodial rights. Decoupling the two actually increases the odds of people getting the help they need, as few families are willing to permanently relinquish their parental rights to help a child gain access to the system.

Falsely linking the two only enables child abandonment to continue, causing maximum damage, a lifetime’s worth of damage to these kids, all while riding on the good intentions of those seeking help.

As for the 2.0 infants, they will of course be facing a different set of issues, but will be no less abandoned, at the state’s encouragement. Their parents will also be in crisis, and no dump law is going to offer real solutions for them.

The Nebraska fiasco only exposed what lies at the core of any dump law: desperation and lack of options.

It’s past time to dump the dump laws and instead demand legislators roll up their sleeves and do the real work, building real structures towards prevention and crisis intervention.

Outsourcing Nebraska’s child welfare problems to “faith based” private agencies or “aging down” in a vain attempt to sidestep the issues the older child abandonments raise are not solutions, they’re not even band-aids.

Rather than trying to manufacture “new and better” ways of the state encouraging legalized child abandonment, the state should instead, be tackling the underlying problems that lead guardians to dump the kids in the first place.

As I keep saying, kids deserve better than abandonment.

Mere monkeying with age limits is no “solution.”

As an immediate measure, the legislature needs to repeal the dump law to prevent even further harm be done to still more kids and their families.

Then as a second step, they need to stop looking to whatever next ‘quick fix’ advocates and salespeople of various stripes would like to sell them on, and instead do the real work.

The kids are waiting, will Nebraska legislators step up?