Legal News

Parenting & the Law: Part II

By Dan Slater

Yesterday, we took a special interest in reproductive rights — specifically, a no-pregnancy order that was given to a woman as a condition of her probation. When we decide to write about something here at the Law Blog, we like to be as comprehensive as possible. It’s with that end in mind that we bring you the following stories from Louisiana and Nebraska.

Sterilization and the state: Here’s the lead from a page-one story in yesterday’s Times-Picayune: “State Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, says the government should consider cash incentives for poor people to undergo reproductive sterilization, because society is careering toward a day when those on public assistance outnumber taxpayers and the economy collapses. A look at Louisiana welfare numbers suggests his fear is unfounded.”

LaBruzzo, notes the Times-Picayune, said his idea of providing Fallopian tubal ligations and a $1,000 bonus to impoverished women was a brainstorming tactic prematurely made public Monday on a radio talk show, followed by Internet and printed reports. “How can we get more people who rely on government to have fewer children who rely on government?” he asked Tuesday. “If there’s fewer of them, we can do more for them.”

Leave your teens behind, with impunity: A new Nebraska law allows parents to leave a child at a licensed hospital without explaining why and without a threat of prosecution. On Wednesday, for instance, reports USA Today, three fathers walked into two hospitals in Omaha and abandoned their children. One left nine siblings, ages 1 to 17. In all, reports USA Today, parents and caregivers in six families have bailed on 14 kids, including seven teens, since the law took effect in July. All 50 states have “safe haven” laws, but the others apply only to infants less than 1 year old.

“They were tired of their parenting role,” says Todd Landry of Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services. He says child behavioral problems, not family financial woes, were a factor in the earlier cases. In the most recent case of abandonment, Landry says the four oldest of the nine siblings were placed together in an emergency shelter and the others in a foster home. “They’re struggling to varying degrees with what’s happened to them.” He says the courts will decide whether to require the parents to pay child support or to try to reunite them with their children.

“This was never the intent of the bill,” says Republican state Sen. Arnie Stuthman. He says he co-wrote it to protect newborns from abandonment, but to get enough support for passage, it was changed to cover all children. “We really opened a can of worms,” he says. “We have a mess.” He says the law needs to be fixed.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 26, 2008 (boomark / email).