April 12–19, 2001

city beat

Abandon Hope

illustration: John Fellows

Adoption activists gear up to fight bills that would make baby dumping legal in Pennsylvania.

by Frank Lewis

Sharon Steinmetz probably will never know her ethnicity, or even her real birthday. Just days after her birth she was left in the pew of a church in Northeast Philly, wrapped in a yellow blanket and mystery. She was later adopted into a loving family, but to this day, 35 years later, her greatest wish is to find out who she really is.

So Steinmetz feels a personal stake in fighting two bills currently winding their way through the Pennsylvania House and Senate that would make it legal to abandon a newborn anonymously, under certain conditions. She’s not the only one. Many adoption activists across the country have made fighting such laws — which have been passed in at least 15 states already, and are pending in about 20 more — a high priority, due in part to fear that such measures will make it even easier to continue to deny adult adoptees access to information about their birth families.

Proponents of so-called "Baby Moses" laws say the intent is to save lives. The reasoning is that if a woman who doesn’t want her child can surrender it anonymously, without fear of prosecution, then she’ll be less likely to leave it in a trash can or public restroom or some other place where it might not be found before it dies.

"By creating safe havens for these endangered newborns at hospitals across the Commonwealth, we give them a chance at life they otherwise may not have had," says State Rep. Ron Marsico in a statement. Last week, Marsico, a Republican from Dauphin County, introduced the Infant Protection Act, which would establish "safe havens" in hospitals where infants up to 15 days old, and free of signs of abuse or neglect, could be left legally and anonymously. The abandoning party (the bill does not specify that it need be a parent, just a "person in lawful custody of a newborn," according to Marsico’s press release), would be given a brochure explaining the Infant Protection Act, and a bracelet for future identification, should the person change his or her mind. (In an eerie coincidence, the Inquirer covered Marsico’s bill the same day it also reported that the death of an infant found in a plastic bag in Cheltenham last week had been ruled a homicide.)

Late last month, the State Senate Judiciary Committee approved a similar bill and sent it to the full Senate for a vote. With 16 co-sponsors and bi-partisan support, it appears likely to pass.

Adoption activists find that disheartening, for various reasons.

Sue Romberger, an activist from Montgomery County, worries that "safe havens" will be seen not just as an alternative to killing or dumping a baby, but to legal adoption. "It’s going to allow people who might have acted responsibly to not act responsibly," she says.

Romberger also points out that these laws do nothing to address the situations of women desperate enough to abandon their children, and sends them a horribly mixed message: "We want your child but we don’t care about you." Legal adoptions typically involve counseling for both the birth and adoptive parents.

The anonymity factor is of great concern to adoption activists. If no one, including the agency that handles the adoption, knows the identities of the birth parents, then the child is forever cut off from information about his or her family history, including medical history. Linda Hammer, host of a broadcast and online radio show on adoption issues called The Seeker (www.the-seeker.com), describes these laws as a "smokescreen" in the ongoing, state-by-state legal and political battle over adoptees’ access to their own birth records. The real intent, she and others argue, may be to create a new excuse for denying access.

Romberger calls it a "baby laundering system" in the making.

Hammer and others also note the potential for horrific abuse. "A father who doesn’t want to pay child support could dump the kid, and it would never be found," Hammer writes on her website.

Steinmetz says she believes lawmakers’ intentions are good, but misguided. "I’ve spoken to some," she says, "and they just stick their names on [these bills], they don’t even know what they’re supporting."

Making it easier for desperate young women to walk away from these difficult situations, making life-altering decisions for themselves and their babies in the process, is not in anyone’s best interests, she says.

"You need to be accountable for your actions. It’s the shame and the lies that put babies in Dumpsters."