'04 law fails to save baby

Death shows need for education, says 'safe haven' backer

By Lisa Ryckman, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 28, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.

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In the seven years since Colorado passed a "safe haven" law for newborns, 15 babies have been left with hospitals or firefighters - and just as many have turned up dead.

The most recent victim was left in a basket outside Presbyterian/ St. Luke's Medical Center Tuesday night by someone who rang the call button and ran.

Denver police, with the help of the hospital and the Denver coroner's office, are investigating, hoping to determine the age of the baby, the cause of death and whether she died before or after she was dropped off.

"It's a lose-lose-lose situation," said Jack Cozzens, president of the board of Colorado Safe Haven for Newborns, a group dedicated to raising awareness about the law that allows a parent to turn in a child without fear of prosecution, about cases such as the one Tuesday. "The baby dies, the mother goes to prison and a couple waiting to adopt a child still don't have one."

So why are so many babies still being abandoned? Critics of so- called safe haven or "Baby Moses" laws say they don't work with the populations most likely to abandon their infants.

Psychiatrist Phillip Resnick of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who coined the term "neonaticide" to describe the killing of an infant in the first 24 hours after birth, has found that most perpetrators are young, poor, unmarried women with little or no prenatal care.

The actual birth might cause them to panic and they might not trust authorities not to press charges, he said.

In the summer of 2004, for example, a baby was left in a Denver trash bin. The very next day, another newborn was found in a trash bin in a sports bar bathroom. Two weeks later, an infant's remains turned up in a makeshift coffin in a shed.

All three could have been left with someone at a hospital or fire station, and for Cozzens and his wife, Judy, their deaths were a call to action.

"We decided we had to do something," says Cozzens, whose son and daughter helped pass safe haven laws in Minnesota and Wisconsin. By fall 2004, Cozzens had helped found Colorado Safe Haven for Newborns, which has been developing teaching materials and has a video about the law for classroom use.

In December, the group's hot line received a call from a Colorado Springs fire station, where a woman had tried to drop off a month-old baby, Cozzens said. The group was able to locate an adoption agency that had a preapproved couple, who went to the fire station to pick up the child that same day.

ryckmanl@RockyMountainNews.com

The law

Colorado's Safe Haven Law allows a parent to deliver an unharmed baby to a fire station or hospital within three days of birth.

The law promises complete confidentiality, and as long as the baby is unharmed, no criminal charges will be filed.

Only a parent may give up the child.

Jack Cozzens of the group Colorado Safe Haven for Newborns says a parent who wants to give up a newborn should hand the baby over to a hospital worker or firefighter and say, "I want to give you this baby under the Colorado Safe Haven Law," then leave immediately.

For more information, go to coloradosafehavenfor newborns.org or call 1-866-694- BABY (2229).

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