A Law that Needed Changing

The NYT reports,

A 14-year-old California boy became the last teenager reported abandoned under Nebraska’s safe-haven law, which was just changed to limit such drop-offs to infants 30-days-old or less.

The boy, from Yolo County, Calif., was left at the Kimball County Hospital late Friday afternoon by his mother, who drove to this town in the Nebraska Panhandle.

The boy is currently in a foster home. Nebraska officials are contacting the appropriate agencies in California.

It brought the total number of children left at hospitals to 36 since the law went on the books in July. Many of them were preteens or teenagers as old as 17.

Nebraska lawmakers changed the law on Friday, which previously did not have an age limit for drop-offs. The change took effect on Saturday.

This law was simply not working out well. Allowing people to drop off children in their teens because they tire of them is bad policy. I think that the age limit could be raised to 6 moths without harm but i am not going to quibble.