Nebraska’s about-face

  It didn’t take long for Nebraska lawmakers to realize the huge mistake they made with their safe-haven law. Intended to protect unwanted children, the broadly written law wound up providing an out for parents – some from other states – who didn’t want to deal with unruly or high-maintenance kids. Some as old as 17 wound up being dumped at Nebraska hospitals. One widowed father of 10, overwhelmed and out of work, left nine of his children at one Omaha hospital. Now that state’s governor and legislators have agreed to rewrite the law so it applies to infants up to 3 days old. The statute has had “serious, unintended consequences” and “needs to be changed to focus on infants,” Gov. Dave Heineman said. No kidding. It’s hard to believe the powers that be didn’t see this coming when they wrote the original bill. Heineman doesn’t want to call a special session to fix it, but says he could change his mind if the out-of-state dropoffs continue. Read more about the law here.

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