I-Team Investigates Texas' Increase In Abandoned Newborns
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Every year newborn babies are abandoned across the country. Left in plastic bags and parking lots, or worse, the little ones wait for someone to come to their rescue.
One of the most recent cases happened in January, just across the Texas border in Hobbs, New Mexico.
Surveillance video showed an 18-year-old woman pulling up behind a gas station, hopping out, then tossing a garbage bag into the dumpster. Inside the bag: a baby boy she'd just delivered.
He survived the freezing temperatures for six hours before being found by dumpster divers. His mother is now charged with attempted murder.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services hopes women here will not make the same mistake.
"I just want them to know that they have options," said Tiffani Butler, a media specialist for the agency.
One of those options: the Safe Haven law, also known as the Baby Moses law.
It allows a mother to legally give up her child at a fire station, hospital, or free-standing emergency room. If the baby is less than 60 days old and there are no signs of abuse,
Butler says the mother can walk away, no questions asked. "They're not going to try to come after you, they're not going to try to make you change your mind, they're not going to call police."
Texas passed the law in 1999 after a rash of newborn abandonments and deaths in the Houston area.
The legislation was hailed as a lifesaver, but it received no funding for education or promotion.
The author of the bill, Rep. Geanie Morrison says while there was widespread support for the legislation proponents believed it would not pass if it required state funds.
Rep. Morrison says supporters raised seed money for her to buy "safe haven" signs for fire stations, but eventually the money ran out and nonprofit groups took up the cause.
One of those groups was Baby Moses Dallas, which was co-founded by Patsy Summey. "When we started looking around, nobody [was] talking about the law."
Summey spent years educating the public and helping make sure every fire station had a sign.
The group also produced a PSA which ran in English and Spanish.
Members of Baby Moses Dallas worked on the cause for more than a decade, well into retirement.
In 2017 the group disbanded, giving up its nonprofit status.
The following year, the number of abandonments rose.
The I-Team found that increase in Texas has continued year after year, almost doubling since 2018.
For Summey -- a former elementary school teacher -- the statistics are heartbreaking.
"You look at Texas, what, 254 counties? Twenty-two is not that many when you look at all the counties," she said. "But when you look at a first-grade classroom, 22 is a full classroom. You're talking about a whole classroom of children who were thrown away."
She worries what it means for the future. "That's telling us that either people have forgotten about the law.. or they may never have known about the law."
Daniel Lester, a supervisor at DFPS, says it can be difficult to get the message to those who need it most.
"Sometimes you have teenage parents, that are having a baby that they are not prepared for, or didn't want to tell anyone about," he said. "And out of fear [they] throw the child in the dumpster."
As for those yellow signs, the I-Team found them hanging at most fire stations. Some had them leaning up against windows, while others had no signs outside, just displays in the lobby.
Summey says lawmakers should allocate money to pay for more signs and new PSAs. She also believes schools should teach about the law.
Both ideas would cost very little; doing nothing Summey says, could cost lives.
"This is a vital law, this is a life-saving law," she said. "We don't need to go back to finding dead babies in suitcases or dead babies in the trash."
