Safe Haven Law
Safe Haven Law
I was reading the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition, and I came across an article about the recent problems regarding Nebraska’s Safe Haven Law. After reading the article and the evidence presented, I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about the law.
Basically, all 50 states have a Safe Haven Law. This law allows parents to drop their children off at a hospital, free of charges from the law, if they feel that their being in the parent’s custody endangers the child’s life. The difference between Nebraska’s law and the other 49 State’s law is that there is no age limit on the children being dropped off. On first thought, I identified the Safe Haven law as good, especially when thinking about newborn children who cannot fend for themselves. But as I read the article about Nebraska, I learned that 17 year old kids had been dropped off as well, in accordance with the law. This disturbed me slightly because I began to wonder what characteristic about a child’s parents would endanger them more when they are 17 as opposed to when they were an infant. I began to wonder if the parents had in fact gotten lazy or tired of coping with their child’s problems, or if there was some other issue.
Then the problem of mental instability and psychological problems was introduced. Apparently, the 17 year old boy who sparked all of this controversy had a long history of psychological problems. His parents did the best they could to get him help, but they had a very difficult time of funding the doctor’s visits and stays in mental institutions. To make matters worse, the state offered no support – citing the fact that the boy had not been in serious trouble with the law, and therefore he didn’t need help. An incident occurred that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and the boy’s parents decided to invoke the Safe Haven Law, leaving him at a hospital for the state to take care of.
After hearing this, my perspective was drastically changed. I still believe that the safe haven law should have an age limit and only apply to infants who are essentially helpless, but, I also think there needs to be more emphasis on helping those with psychological problems. Possibly there could be a coordinate program that focuses on specifically helping this group of people. If the state had been more cooperative with the parents of this child, who did all that they could to help him, then this action would not have even occurred or been an issue.
More generally though, I realized that our country offers (seemingly) very little support for mental disabilities and psychological problems in general. I drew conclusions with this fact to our country’s homelessness problem, because large amounts of homeless people concurrently have psychosocial issues (this may even be the cause for some). I guess the main thing this article did though, was to make me aware of a somewhat unseen problem of our country. If we could commit to solving/trying to fix this problem, then the quality of life for many people would be improved.
November 25th, 2008 at 3:08 am
I have been studying the politics of Obama in my Intro to American Government class and I am hopeful that what you say might eventually be true of the medical opportunities in America. We’re so behind in our individualistic nature that we can’t see that what’s good for everyone is better for the individual.
With a unified government (Democratic Party leading congress and the Presidency) I am both frightened and excited. Obama has not unveiled his economic team, but as soon as he chooses the members he will likely move onto the rest of his cabinet as the Republicans are ousted and Democrats come in. God bless our leaders as they attempt to stave off our economic crisis and God bless those in need of care because I worry that America will learn how tightfisted it can really be. Pres-elect Obama says that the top bracket has a little more to give, but I just hope they are willing to buy into his plan. For the good of the country.