Heartland Values
by digby
Parents are abandoning teenagers at Nebraska hospitals, in a case of a well intentioned law inspiring unintended results. Over the last two weeks, moms or dads have dropped off seven teens at hospitals in the Cornhusker state, indicating they didn’t want to care for them any more. “They were tired of their parenting role,” according to Todd Landry of Nebraska’s Department of Human and Human Services, quoted in USA Today. Under a newly implemented law, Nebraska is the only state in the nation to allow parents to leave children of any age at hospitals and request they be taken care of, USA Today notes. So-called “safe haven laws” in other states were designed to protect babies and infants from parental abandonment. The most eye-popping case in Nebraska occurred Wednesday, when a 34-year-old father deposited nine children ages 1 to 17 at Creighton University Medical Center — and then walked away.
I don’t imagine there’s anything unusual about nebraska that precipitated this odd response. It could probably happen anywhere that made a law like this. But you can’t help but be struck by the numbers.
What is going on in this country? Sometimes I feel like this is the leading edge of an era that could make Dickensian England look fair and compassionate by comparison.
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