New hope for infant ‘safe haven’ bill

Associated Press

OLYMPIA — Long orphaned in the divided House, a bill that would allow parents to leave newborn infants at hospitals without threat of prosecution got a friendlier reception Tuesday from the new Democratic majority.

The bill would create safe havens in hospitals where parents could anonymously leave babies within 72 hours of birth and be immune from criminal liability.

It also would establish a task force to promote adoption and develop ways for biological parents to provide medical history.

Under current law, a person who abandons a child could be prosecuted for abandonment or attempted murder. A mother who abandons her baby in a hospital could be charged with family abandonment or family nonsupport.

The proposal passed the Democratically controlled Senate unanimously four times in recent years, but died in the evenly divided House.

With Democrats now in the House majority, the bill has a better chance of passing.

Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, sponsored SB 5236 after a boy found a newborn alive on the side of a street in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood in early 2000.

"I don’t want to hear any more about a newborn being found dead in a dumpster," Kohl-Welles said. "I think our responsibility is to these infants. This bill provides a commonsense approach."

Rep. Ed Orcutt, R-Kelso, questioned the bill’s effectiveness and worried it would promote promiscuity among young adults.

"I understand the importance of saving these babies," Orcutt said. "I’m also concerned about maybe putting ideas into young women’s heads that maybe this is OK."

Lawmakers’ inability to pass the bill has frustrated Julie, the adoptive mother of two abandoned children — Emily, who in 1998 was left in the woods near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and 2-year-old Nicholas, the baby abandoned in Magnolia.

"In my mind it’s about the babies," Julie said, asking that her last name be withheld.