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Sign up for The Brief<\/a>, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.<\/em><\/p>\n Patsy Summey spent more than a decade with a nonprofit providing education about Texas\u2019 safe haven law. She distributed signs, gave presentations, helped with public service announcements and cold emailed fire stations. The lifelong educator wanted to spread the word: If people were searching for a way to safely and legally relinquish their newborn babies, there is a law to help them.<\/p>\n \u201cSome, because they don’t know about it, they don’t realize, \u2018I can go in the hospital and have this baby, leave and not take the baby with me.\u2019 They can do that,\u201d Summey said.<\/p>\n The idea behind Texas\u2019 safe haven law is simple. Any parent can bring their baby who is less than 60 days old to a fire station, hospital or EMS station and hand it over, no questions asked. If the baby is unharmed, parents face no criminal charges and the Department of Family and Protective Services takes custody.<\/p>\n Texas passed the law in 1999 under Gov. George W. Bush. Since then, every other state has followed suit. Lawmakers envisioned the law as a solution to a spate of baby abandonments<\/a> in Houston in the \u201990s. The law\u2019s proponents felt that if one baby could be saved, it was worth it.<\/p>\n But the measure lacked funding \u2014 proponents didn\u2019t think the bill could pass with a price tag attached \u2014 so third-party advocates tried to spread the word with PSAs and signs. Promotion of safe havens relied on the goodwill of volunteers like Summey, who is a retired teacher, and her group, called Baby Moses Dallas.<\/p>\n The U.S. Supreme Court cited safe haven laws when it overturned Roe v. Wade<\/a>. In his majority opinion finding that there\u2019s no constitutional right to an abortion, Justice Samuel Alito mentioned that all states have safe haven laws, \u201cwhich generally allow women to drop off babies anonymously.\u201d During the Supreme Court\u2019s oral arguments for the case last year, Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned why safe haven laws don\u2019t take care of \u201cthe burdens of parenting.\u201d<\/p>\n But in Texas the law is rarely utilized.<\/p>\n Just 172 infants have been relinquished under the safe haven law since 2009, according to data from the Department of Family and Protective Services. Twenty-one babies were surrendered under the law in 2020 \u2014 the most in one year during that time span. Seven infants have been relinquished so far this year.<\/p>\n For comparison, there were more than 50,000 abortions<\/a> in Texas last year and the state had almost 370,000 live births<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n Experts contend that the safe haven law isn\u2019t used or known well enough to be a sufficient alternative to abortion. And because it allows parents to relinquish their newborns anonymously, the experts say, it\u2019s difficult to gather data on why parents make this choice. They also say it\u2019s not clear that the option will be utilized more in a post-Roe world.<\/p>\n \u201c[The justices] seem to think that the existence of safe haven laws means that abortion can be outlawed with really no harm to women as a class, which I find very weird,\u201d said Jessica R. Pliley, a history professor at Texas State University who studies women, genders and sexuality. \u201cIt’s a very strange argument, because, first of all, safe haven laws in Texas \u2026 there’s really just been not that many [newborns] surrendered or relinquished.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, justices\u2019 majority opinion<\/a> mentioned anti-abortion advocates\u2019 belief that \u201ca woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home.\u201d<\/p>\n But that is not clear in Texas, where relinquished babies enter the care of the state\u2019s Department of Family and Protective Services. That agency is under federal monitoring after it was found to be routinely violating the constitutional rights of foster children<\/a>, and has gone from \u201cbad to worse\u201d<\/a> in recent years. Independent experts<\/a> describe the system as \u201ca disjointed and dangerous … where harm to children is at times overlooked, ignored or forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n Abortion rights advocates say the safe haven argument ignores the idea that nine months of pregnancy can have life altering physical, emotional, financial and professional impacts, even if the mother gives up the baby in the end.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea that safe haven laws can be a solution to kind of the trials and tribulations that women who are seeking abortion space is actually disingenuous,\u201d Pliley said, \u201cparticularly when we think about the women who most need access to reproductive health care and to abortion services.\u201d<\/p>\n Alito cited other arguments that \u201cmodern developments\u201d \u2014 such as health insurance or government assistance covering the cost of childbirth, maternity leave policies and laws against pregnancy discrimination \u2014 provide other options or protections for pregnant people.<\/p>\n But people of color have been most likely to access abortion care, make up the majority of people who are poor or low income, and lack access to these resources, experts recently told the Tribune<\/a>. Texas has the highest rate<\/a> of uninsured women of reproductive age in the country. The state has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, an investigation by USA Today<\/a> found, and Black women<\/a> are disproportionately affected.<\/p>\n Anti-abortion advocates acknowledge those issues in their comments after the ruling.<\/p>\n \u201cNow the pro-life movement can expend even greater resources toward providing compassionate alternatives to abortion for women with unplanned pregnancies,\u201d the Texas Alliance for Life said in a statement. \u201cOur goal continues to be to build a society where abortion is unthinkable, and women with unplanned pregnancies take full advantage of the vast resources available to them.\u201d<\/p>\n But Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a research program at the University of California San Francisco, said she\u2019s not certain that there will be a significant increase in safe haven usage now that Roe v. Wade is overturned.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you talk about numbers that small,\u201d she said, \u201cyou could double them in a year, and it could just be coincidental.\u201d<\/p>\n Laury Oaks, a feminist studies professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said she also doesn\u2019t believe safe haven relinquishments in Texas are going to dramatically increase once abortions are officially outlawed.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that those who are in the know already know about safe havens, and they’re not seeming to use safe havens to a vast degree,\u201d Oaks said. \u201cI guess that part of my thinking about why safe havens aren’t going to dramatically jump is because other options, like legal, open adoption, are also going to continue to be options.\u201d<\/p>\n Summey\u2019s organization, Baby Moses Dallas \u2014 named after the biblical story of Moses\u2019 adoption after his mother left him in a basket in the River Nile \u2014 was established in 2004 with more than a dozen volunteers. That number dwindled until Summey was one of a handful of helpers left to spread the word about the safe haven law in Dallas.<\/p>\n In 2016, the group decided it was time to relinquish their nonprofit status, partly because they lacked the formal structure needed to function, she said. Although the group isn\u2019t a nonprofit anymore, she and another volunteer still make themselves available to respond to inquiries about the safe haven law.<\/p>\n She\u2019s concerned that even with Roe v. Wade overturned, the Texas Legislature isn\u2019t going to establish more support for the law \u2014 whether through funding, education or both.<\/p>\n \u201cI would hope that it would be used more,\u201d Summey said. \u201cIf a person who’s pregnant doesn’t know about the availability of that law, you know, then it won’t be used.\u201d<\/p>\n Join us Sept. 22-24 in person in downtown Austin for The Texas Tribune Festival<\/a> and experience 100+ conversation events featuring big names you know and others you should from the worlds of politics, public policy, the media and tech \u2014 all curated by The Texas Tribune\u2019s award-winning journalists. Buy tickets.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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