Nearly a decade ago, the state passed what is now known nationally as a Safe Haven law.
The law allows a person to drop off a newborn baby at a fire station, police station, hospital or other appropriate place and no questions will be asked.
The Safe Haven law got plenty of publicity when it went into effect, but then it seemed to be forgotten for many years.
Occasionally, a newborn would be found in the trash, usually abandoned by a young teen mother who had hidden her pregnancy, and there would be a brief flurry of publicity about the Safe Haven law. But it would come too late for the mother who didn’t know about the law, after a tragedy had occurred.
Last year, realizing that many teens likely had no idea the law existed, there was a push to get Indiana legislators to require schools to include information about the Safe Haven law in their curriculum.
That way, virtually every student would be informed about the law instead of waiting until another baby had been thrown away before the law was mentioned again.
Those efforts didn’t accomplish much.
Even the legislator who sponsored the original Safe Haven law said that with schools under financial pressure, this wasn’t the year to introduce a new program, even though talking about the law would cost nothing and take only minutes.
It turns out, though, that at least in northeast Indiana, an answer to the problem had been under our noses the whole time: the McMillen Center for Health Education.
The McMillen Center provides health education programs for schools in 28 different counties in Indiana and Ohio, and even offers video conference programs to schools all over the country.
After a baby was abandoned in a trash container in DeKalb County last year, a woman called the center and asked whether they taught students about the Safe Haven law.
“We don’t,” said Holli Seabury, McMillen CEO, “and I’m betting nobody does.”
That’s when McMillen officials had what one could call an “I coulda had a V8” moment.
“We thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve really got to include this’ ” in the curriculum, said Linda Hathaway, program manager at McMillen.
The McMillen Center’s programs are centered on the state-mandated health curriculum.
“So if it (the Safe Haven law) is not in the state standards, it’s not on our radar,” Seabury said.
“That’s how it slipped through the cracks.”
Now that information about the law is being taught by McMillen, “I can’t guarantee every kid in northeast Indiana will hear about it,” Seabury said, “but it’s better than nothing.”
McMillen has included information about the Safe Haven law in its curriculum for about a month now, but as part of its program, it passes out a little card that includes on one side details on the Safe Haven law, such as where a newborn can be dropped off.
“They put it in their wallet and it will be there if they need it,” Hathaway said, or a friend of a desperate young mother will know about it.
It’s not the full answer, but for Indiana, at least, it’s a start.
Frank Gray has held positions as reporter and editor at The Journal Gazette since 1982 and has been writing a column on local topics since 1998. His column is published Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. He can be reached by phone at 461-8376, by fax at 461-8893, or e-mail at fgray@jg.net.
