"Baby safe haven" laws, which allow a parent to relinquish a newborn
baby legally and anonymously at a specified institutional location--such
as a hospital or fire station--were established in every state between
1999 and 2009. Promoted during a time of heated public debate over
policies on abortion, sex education, teen pregnancy, adoption, welfare,
immigrant reproduction, and child abuse, safe haven laws were passed by
the majority of states with little contest. These laws were thought to
offer a solution to the consequences of unwanted pregnancies: mothers
would no longer be burdened with children they could not care for, and
newborn babies would no longer be abandoned in dumpsters.
Yet while these laws are well meaning, they ignore the real problem:
some women lack key social and economic supports that mothers need to
raise children. Safe haven laws do little to help disadvantaged women.
Instead,
advocates of safe haven laws target teenagers, women of color, and poor
women with safe haven information and see relinquishing custody of their
newborns as an act of maternal love. Disadvantaged women are
preemptively judged as "bad" mothers whose babies would be better off
without them.
Laury Oaks argues that the labeling of certain kinds of women as
potential "bad" mothers who should consider anonymously giving up their
newborns for adoption into a "loving" home should best be understood as
an issue of reproductive justice. Safe haven discourses promote narrow
images of who deserves to be a mother and reflect restrictive views on
how we should treat women experiencing unwanted pregnancy.
