AngelaW's blog

Top 10 List - Most Commented Blogs

2008-12-22T05:15:04-06:00

2008 is almost over and I am looking over the past year. SandraHanksBenoiton posted the first blog on on January 29th. We have posted about 1,340 blogs and book reviews since then. And we received over 2,500 comments. Wow... that is a lot of words.

BIG THANKS to all our commenters. We appreciated your contributions.

FaithA was the most frequent commenter. She posted 328 comments. LisaS was almost as wordy. She posted 319 comments. Here are the rest of our frequent commenters.

John - 287
chromesthesia - 193
scrapsbynobody - 142
AngelaW - 137
Snafu Suz - 80
Linny - 76
SandraHanksBenoiton - 70
JulieC - 65
califdads - 57
soblessed - 54
Shelly - 52
FosterMommy - 47
Amyadoptee - 37
Lisa Pietsch - 35
Anonymous - 35
KatjaMichelle - 31
Adoption Ally - 24
LisaK - 24

And here are our most commented on blogs.

17 comments - Identifying FAS At Birth
18 comments - Guest Blog: "The Big Picture" by Scraps and Adoptee Blogger Upset With My Comments and UNICEF Continues its Anti-Adoption Crusade
21 comments - Adopted and Abused?
22 comments - Whose Business is it Anyway?
23 comments - Guest Blog: California’s Proposition 8 Affects Families
25 comments - Guest Blog: Adoptees and Broken Trust
27 comments - Guatemalan Babies Don’t Suffer from Attachment Issues and Trauma – Think Again!
28 comments - Parenting Mistakes Saturday – Explain How Your Adopted Child Will Exit Family Living, Repeatedly
45 comments - Are All Members of the Adoption Triad Anti-Abortion?
46 comments - Winner of the $25 Gift Certificate from Amazon.com to be Announced Today

Image Credit: For This, I'm On The List 3 by The Jamoker

Stanley Cornell - Riding An Orphan Train in 1927

2008-12-17T08:28:12-06:00

I watched the "Orphans rode trains, seeking parents" video on CNN and found it a jumble. I had to piece together Stanley Cornell's story from several articles and the video. The editing was bad or maybe they didn't understand the story?

Anyway the video is worth watching as a starting point. Stanley Cornell was 6 years old when he rode the orphan train in 1926. He was traveling with his brother, Victor, who was 1 year younger. Stanley is 88 years old now.

Stanley remembers his mother dying. The state government decided that his widowed father couldn't take care of two young boys and removed them.

Their mother died when their sister, Eloise, was born, and their father, a victim of a German gas attack in World War I, was unable to care for them. Another sister took Eloise, but didn't have room for Stanley and Victor.

It sounds like Stanley and Victor lived in an orphanage for a while. Then they were placed on an "orphan train". They found a home with a Coffeyville, Kansas family, but it wasn't a happy ending.

"They were kind and we liked them, but after a couple of months they sent us back. I still don't know why. Maybe their other kids didn't like us," said Cornell

So Stanley and Victor rode the orphan train again. In Wellington, Texas they met their adoptive father. He was a farmer who had driven into town with his Model-T car.

Families who adopted children from the orphan trains were required sign a document. They agreed to never share birth family information. And the "orphans" were told to forget about their birth family and not search for them.

But that didn't stop Stanley. Stanley did search for his first father. He was creative in his search. He send a telegram to J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director, asking for help in locating his father. Hoover quickly sent a reply with the father's location.

Other Articles

Orphan Train' Riders Gather (2000 article)
Survivors Mark Orphan Trains (2000 article)
Orphan Train History

US State Department, Adoption Info Moves and International Adoption Statistics

2008-11-18T15:13:00-06:00

I totally missed the grand announcement. Or maybe they just moved and didn't tell anyone? The US State Department's Office of Children's Issues has a new web site. This web site is a good start place for any American thinking about intercountry adoption.

They recently posted the numbers for 2008 adoptions. 17,438 children were adopted by American citizens in 2008 through intercountry adoption. This is close to the 1999 count.

I haven't looked yet but there will be blogs talking about how bad this is... or news articles that make this sound like the end of the world.

My thoughts toward these adoption statistics? I want to tear the numbers apart before I join the chicken-little-sky-is-~~flying~~falling crowd.

I will write a more detailed blog on the adoption statistics, but on the surface there aren't any surprises. I had expected to see more adoptions from Africa this year. This is why I wrote blogs on Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia. The International Adoption Statistics for 2007 showed that 9% of the intercountry adoptions were from Africa. 14% of the adoptions were from Africa in 2008.

I think that we are going to see more fragmentation in intercountry adoption by Americans. Americans will be adopting from more countries. From 1996 to 2007, 3 out 4 children were adopted from China, Guatemala, Korea and Russia. Guatemalan adoption is closed. China and Russian adoption has slowed. Korea is the only country with stability in their adoption statistics and they have trended downward.

1996 - 1,580
1997 - 1,506
1998 - 1,705
1999 - 1,956
2000 - 1,711
2001 - 1,863
2002 - 1,713
2003 - 1,793
2004 - 1,708
2005 - 1,604
2006 - 1,381
2007 - 945
2008 - 1,065

The US government works on an October-October calendar which is why the numbers are released now.

Random thoughts...

I continue to wonder about supply vs demand for adoption.

Adoptive Families Really Are A Minority Group. Only 2.5% of the households with children in the United States include adopted children. And due to stepparent adoption, American men are more than twice as likely to adopt as women.

Intercountry adoption is going down. Does this mean that domestic adoption is going up? Foster adoptions will increase?

Google Suggest Adoption Keywords

2008-11-16T23:02:36-06:00

I have been playing with Google Suggest. As you are typing search terms into google.com, you can get suggestions on how to finish your phrase.

Google's algorithm for creating this list is very cool. It has the suggested phrases sorted in "best guess" order. Google uses their search data to predict what phrase you are trying to type.

So "why adopt a child" is more popular then "why adopt a pet". Kind of interesting...

So what is on people's minds concerning adoption? Many people are focused on "adoption records". I was very surprised to see "adoption UK" as the second suggestion in this list. Who knew that "adoption UK" was so popular.

And it turns out that many folks have some doubts about adoption. They want to know if "adoption is right for me" and have concens about the cost of adoption.

There seems to be Christian and Muslims interested in adoption."haram" is a Muslim term... "is adoption haram" similar to asking "is adoption a sin".

Reply to Harlow's Monkey: Adoption Numbers

2008-11-12T16:49:58-06:00

Dear Harlow's Monkey (aka Jae),

I lost your email address. And it looks like you have suspended comments on your blog. So here is my reply to your Adoption Numbers blog.

You expressed curiosity about a Washington Post story on Adoption's Numbers Mystery.

August 2008, National Center for Health Statistics released a paper titled, Adoption Experiences of Women and Men and Demand for Children to Adopt by Women 18-44 Years of Age in the United States, 2002. The 45-page PDF is focused on the "thinking about adoption" or "currently seeking to adopt" crowd. But there is some information on adults who completed adoptions and the available children.

The Washington Post article said:

521,400 survey respondents said they would adopt a black child

Harlow's Monkey asked:

what is the racial breakdown of the respondents?

First off you should know that the survey was really taken by 12,571 people. (look at the methods section in the NCHS report). The numbers used in Adoption's Numbers Mystery are weighted national estimates. (estimate = best guess)

Secondly, Jeff Katz's didn't get all of his numbers from the NCHS report. But some are in there.

Anywho... back to the question. Table 15 in NCHS report partly answers your question about the 600,000 American women who are currently seeking to adopt a child not known to them. And by "currently seeking", they are talking about survey responses from 2002/2003.

About 50% of all women respondents didn't care about their potential adopted child's race.

To be more specific.... 54.5 of the white women, 49.5% of the black women and an unknown percentage of the hispanic did care about the potential adopted child's race. They were asked these follow up questions.

Would you accept a black child? (if preferred a white child or a child of some other race)

Would you accept a white child? (if preferred a black child or a child of some other face)

Would you accept a child of some other race, neither black nor white? (if perferred a black or white child)

The follow up questions were used to generate the "Percentage Prefer or Accept" column. So 83.6% of 54.5% of the white women survey respondents, said they would accept adopting a black child. 100% of the 54.5% of the white women said they would accept a white child.

Table 15. Number of women 18–44 years of age currently seeking to adopt a child not already known to them and percentage who prefer or who would accept a child with the selected characteristic: United States, 2002

Race of Woman	Race of Child	Percentage Prefer	Percentage Prefer or Accept
White (Not Hispanic or Latina)	Black child	---	83.6%
White (Not Hispanic or Latina)	White child	35.2%	100.0%
White (Not Hispanic or Latina)	Child of another race	17.5%	94.6%
White (Not Hispanic or Latina)	indifferent	45.5%	NA
Black or African American	Black child	32.9%	87.5%
Black or African American	White child	---	75.0%
Black or African American	Child of another race	***	92.7%
Black or African American	indifferent	50.5%	NA

NA Category not applicable
--- Quantity zero (statistically zero)
*** Figure does not meet standards of reliability or precision.
Prefer or Accept - Only women who did not indicate a specific attribute were asked if they would accept a child of a different attribute.

Image Credit: Mama by laszlo-photo

2005 Statistics on African American Children in Foster Care System

2008-11-06T00:53:24-06:00

A searcher found our web site by googling for 2005 statistics of african american children still in foster care systems around the u.s. This led to the blog on What Influences Adoption Rate for African American Children From Foster Care? I doubt that blog satisified the searcher. And since I enjoy statistics so much... and I have the 2005 statistics... here is a blog on statistics for African American children in foster care.

First let me set the scene... Let's look at averages across all 50 states.

25% of American states' population are children. 0.76% of the children's population are foster children.

11% of the states' population are African American. 6% of African American adults in poverty (lives on $10,000 or less per year). 12% of African American children live in poverty.

At any given moment there are 500,000 children in foster care across the United States. 26% of them are African American children.

So now let's look at state level statistics.Take a look at New York... Doesn't that look weird to you? Only 15% of that state's population is African American, but 48% of foster children are African American.

Look at Minnesota. 4% of the state is African American. 19% of foster children are African American. 27% of foster children waiting for adoption are African American.

I find it stunning that some states have such disproportional representation of African American children in foster care. A state population's ethnicity percentage should be similar to the foster care system unless there are biases in the system.

Remember my data mining project to uncover influences and try to predict the African American adoption rate from foster care.... The number one influence was how many African American children entered the system (ie child protection services child abuse complaints were found to be true). This makes sense input=output. But the second factor was the size of the African American population per state. When looking at the United States as a whole, Data Mining sees this as an important predictive factor. But when you take a look at individual states there seems to be problems.

State	Percentage of Black (Non-Hispanic) in State Population	Percentage of Foster Child who are Black (Non-Hispanic)	Percentage of CPS Abuse Investigations are Substantiated for African-American Children	Percentage of Foster Children Waiting to Be Adopted and are Black (Non-Hispanic)
Alabama	26%	46%	24%
Alaska	3%	5%	5%	6%
Arizona	3%	8%	6%	7%
Arkansas	15%	28%	19%	24%
California	6%	26%	13%	28%
Colorado	4%	11%	7%	11%
Connecticut	9%		23%
Delaware	20%	58%	46%	60%
District of Columbia	57%	87%	62%	94%
Florida	15%	39%	30%	42%
Georgia	29%	47%	40%	51%
Hawaii	2%	1%	2%	1%
Idaho	0%	1%	0%	1%
Illinois	15%	64%	33%	64%
Indiana	9%	32%	18%	37%
Iowa	2%	14%	9%	18%
Kansas	6%	20%	13%	29%
Kentucky	7%	19%	13%	20%
Louisiana	33%	52%	44%	57%
Maine	1%	2%	2%	1%
Maryland	29%	74%	48%	75%
Massachusetts	6%	17%	14%	15%
Michigan	14%	49%	35%	52%
Minnesota	4%	19%	22%	27%
Mississippi	37%	51%	41%	53%
Missouri	11%	31%	20%	35%
Montana	1%	1%	1%	2%
Nebraska	4%	15%	13%	20%
Nevada	7%	22%	15%	23%
New Hampshire	1%	4%	2%	2%
New Jersey	13%		33%
New Mexico	2%	4%	3%	6%
New York	15%	48%	27%	50%
North Carolina	21%	42%	33%	43%
North Dakota	1%	3%	4%	4%
Ohio	12%	41%	26%	47%
Oklahoma	7%	16%	12%	18%
Oregon	2%	6%	5%
Pennsylvania	10%	47%		45%
Rhode Island	5%	18%	12%	20%
South Carolina	29%	48%	37%	51%
South Dakota	1%	2%	3%	3%
Tennessee	16%	31%	25%	35%
Texas	11%	24%	16%	26%
Utah	1%	5%	3%	6%
Vermont	1%	3%	1%	2%
Virginia	19%	42%	38%	46%
Washington	3%	10%	6%	13%
West Virginia	3%	8%	3%	8%
Wisconsin	6%	38%	23%	47%
Wyoming	1%	4%	2%	8%

Here are the 10 states with the highest disproportional representation.

State	Percentage of Black (Non-Hispanic) in State Population	Percentage of Foster Child who are Black (Non-Hispanic)
Illinois	15%	64%
Maryland	29%	74%
Delaware	20%	58%
Pennsylvania	10%	47%
Michigan	14%	49%
New York	15%	48%
Wisconsin	6%	38%
District of Columbia	57%	87%
Ohio	12%	41%
Florida	15%	39%

Data Sources: US Census, US Department of Health and Human Services

Image Credit: Capri by pocketwiley

Where Do Foster Children Live?

2008-11-04T17:11:48-06:00

I am trying to get back and expand on What Influences the Adoption Rate of African American Children From Foster Care. I still have plenty to say on the topic. So I have poking around (also known as data exploration) to see what pops up. I found some interesting foster care statistics in the 2005 data that I am using.

There is a high positive correlation between two variables:

Foster Child, Percentage of Total United States Foster Child Population

and

Child, Percentage of Total United States Child Population

This correlation, 0.97, is very good news. It means that both numbers are measuring the same mathematical relationship. So why is this good news?

One complaint about the child protection system is that occasionally workers are too eager to remove children from families.

I still remember the grief on a local woman's face as a TV reporter interviewed her. Her daughter was taken from her because a child care worker called in an abuse complaint. Then a child protection services worker visited with the 2 year old child and decided it was abuse. NONE of these idiots (child care or CPS) had seen a mongolian spot before.

Frosting on the cake.... while enrolling her daughter in child care, the mom provided medical records on the mongolian spot. It took 6 f@#$ MONTHS to get her daughter back from foster care.

Anyway back to the statistics... With both of these numbers, I was looking at where the largest populations of foster children and children live. 65% of foster children live in 16 states. 62% of all children live in the same 16 states.

State	Foster Child, Percentage of Total United States Foster Child Population	Child, Percentage of Total United States Child Population
California	15.82%	13.63%
New York	5.93%	6.32%
Florida	5.71%	4.88%
Texas	5.63%	8.19%
Pennsylvania	4.23%	3.90%
Michigan	3.99%	3.36%
Illinois	3.79%	4.32%
Ohio	3.40%	3.79%
Georgia	2.72%	2.95%
Massachusetts	2.38%	2.04%
New Jersey	2.35%	2.77%
Oklahoma	2.22%	1.17%
Missouri	2.21%	1.90%
Indiana	2.19%	2.09%
Oregon	2.15%	1.12%
Maryland	2.12%	1.83%

Because the foster care population has basically the same pattern as child population... I think this proves that on the average foster care isn't just yanking kiddos out of the family home. In other words the foster care system doesn't appear to be abusive when looking at all 50 states together.

There is another interesting and high positive correlation between two variables:

Foster Child, Percentage of Total United States Foster Child Population

and

Child, Enrolled in the State Children's Health Insurance Program, Percentage of Total United States CHIP Population

CHIP states for Children's Health Insurance Program. CHIP has been around since 1997. The goal of each state's program is to make sure all children receive health care. CHIP is open to all children who don't have Medicaid coverage. And I believe most states will cover up to 19 years of age. 79% of children enrolled in CHIP live in just 16 states. You may have noticed that the table below has 13 states in common with the table above.

State	Foster Child, Percentage of Total United States Foster Child Population	Child, Enrolled in the State Children's Health Insurance Program, Percentage of Total United States CHIP Population
California	15.82%	20.01%
New York	5.93%	10.12%
Texas	5.63%	8.61%
Florida	5.71%	6.29%
Georgia	2.72%	5.02%
Illinois	3.79%	4.60%
Ohio	3.40%	3.54%
North Carolina	2.08%	3.21%
Pennsylvania	4.23%	2.94%
Massachusetts	2.38%	2.66%
New Jersey	2.35%	2.12%
Indiana	2.19%	2.12%
Virginia	1.37%	2.03%
Maryland	2.12%	1.97%
Missouri	2.21%	1.89%
Louisiana	0.94%	1.79%

I wonder if the CHIP programs could provide family preservation services or parenting classes? After all a child's health is supported by a mentally healthy family.

Would those additional services help children not enter foster care? Or is there a high correlation because so many foster children have CHIP? Or are these 2 statistics even measuring the same population?

Maybe it is a chicken or egg problem. What came first? Children enrolled in CHIP or entered foster care?

Image Credit: Siblings by mensatic

2005 Data Credit: US Census Bureau, US Department of Health and Human Services

What Influences Adoption Rate for African American Children From Foster Care?

2008-10-12T22:16:31-05:00

I wrote Race and Foster Care a while back as a reaction to the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute report. This 58 page report was released in May 2008. The report was an attempt to answer five questions that were asked during a September 2007 U.S. Civil Rights Commission meeting.

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission wanted to know if the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) was working. This is a federal law that was suppose to help minority children leave the foster care system in a timely manner. African American children are in foster care for nine months longer then white foster children.

I have been thinking about this study some more and decided to take a different direction. Via data mining I tried to answer the question, "What Influences Adoption Rate for African American Children From Foster Care?"

Before I start answering this question, I need to add some quibbling. Data Mining can be more of an art then a science. You need a solid understanding of your dataset, problem space and the different analytical algorithms before you can gain reasonable and actionable knowledge.

I am not an expert on data mining but I have some experience. And I have access to data mining tools. I ran my data set and results past several men who are experts. And they didn't spot any holes. But that doesn't mean the results are solid. So take them with a grain of salt.

I started my task by collecting over 500 variables. I collect all of these variables per state for 2005. I found statistics describing the state's population from the U.S. Census Bureau. And I collected statistics describing the children who were investigated for child abuse, who were in foster care and who were adopted from foster care from U.S. Health and Human Services.

Next I tried to find my important variables and narrowed it from 500+ variables to about 200. Next, I created and evaluated different models (boring work). I had a model that achieved a 93% accuracy rate which is really good.

Here are the top 12 factors that influence how many black children are adopted from foster care for the United States from my best model.

Foster Child, Ethnicity, CPS Investigation Substantiated, Percentage African-American Only
State Population, Ethnicity, Percentage Black Alone
State Population, Transportation, Percentage Workers 16 Years and Over Who Traveled to Work by Public Transportation
State Population, Ethnicity, Percentage White Alone
State Population, Transportation, Percentage Workers 16 Years and Over Who Worked Outside County of Residence
Foster Child, Ethnicity, Percentage Foster Children Adopted, White-Non Hispanic
State Population, Ethnicity, Percentage American Indian and Alaska Native Alone
Foster Child, Ethnicity, CPS Investigation Substantiated, Percentage American Indian or Alaska Native Only Percent
State Population, Family, Percentage of Married Couple Families
State Population, Family, Percentage of Households with Children Under 18 years
State Population, Family, Percentage of Women 15 years and Over Who Were Never Married
State Population, Poverty, Percentage of White children in poverty/total white poverty status

To be continued in Where Do Foster Children Live?

Ethiopia Adoption Resources and Statistics

2008-10-01T13:41:33-05:00

I am continuing my tour of African countries where intercountry adoption is possible. I started with Nigerian adoption (Western Africa) then moved to Zambian adoption (Southern Africa). Just to be confusing (grin) I went back to Western Africa and visited Ghanan adoption.

FosterMommy pitched in and asked, Can Your U.S. Family Adopt a Baby From Cameroon? (borders Nigeria)

Now I want to visit Ethopia. It is an amazing country. I had to read Wikipedia's Ethiopian history several times. It is one of the world's oldest countries and converted to Christianity in the 400s. There was a Muslim migration to the area in the 900s. And then there is this:

Human settlement in Ethiopia dates back to prehistoric times. Fossilized remains of the earliest ancestors to the human species, discovered in Ethiopia, have been assigned dates as long ago as 5.9 million years.

Only 9% of the children internationally adopted by Americans in 2007 were adopted from Africa. 71% of the 9% were adopted from Ethiopia. The second most popular country to adopt from is Liberia. I will try to write about that next week.

Looking at the Office of Immigration Statistics over a 12 year period for Ethiopia adoption... On average an equal number of boys and girls are adopted from this country. About 60% of children are 4 years or younger. 40% are 5 years or older.

Gender: Male	Gender: Female
46%	54%

Age: Under 1 year	Age: 1 to 4 years	Age: 5 years or older
26%	32%	42%

From 1996 to 2004 the US government had more specific age categories. They had a "5 to 9 years old" and "9 years and older". Starting with 2005 they combined these into the "5 years or older" category.

Because I have these past statistics, I can estimate at 2007's numbers for the older children (last 2 categories below). Here are the percentage of children adopted based on their age for 2007. There are many families adopting older children. Actually Russia, Ukraine and Ethiopia are where Americans adopt the largest number of older children.

Age: Under 1 year	Age: 1-4 years	Age: 5-9 years	Age: over 9 years
33%	35%	19%	13%

So now let's take a peak at how Angelina Jolie impacted Ethiopian adoption. What year did Angelina adopt Zahara? Did you guess 2005?

You can join the Ethiopia Adopt email list to find out more. And since independent adoption is possible, you will want to also join adoptafrica and IndyIntAdopt.

While reading about Ethiopian adoption I stumbled across a new favorite blog. Tami is a single woman of color. She started her Ethiopian adoption in June 2007. Read My Story first and follow it up with Will I Be Enough. I loved The Big Haircare Dilemma.

But my number one favorite Ethiopian blog is Full House, Full Hands, Full Hearts by Erin. We used to write/work for the same company. She is currently the HIV+ adoption coordinator for Adoption Advocates International. Erin and her husband Josh parent a large family with 11 children. And several of these children are HIV+.

Tell Family and Friends About Your Adoption

2008-09-30T13:21:13-05:00

My darling is now 11 years old, but I was recently looking at some old photos. She is 5 years old in this picture. And she is very happy.

Revisiting old history made me think about my "family and friends" letter. (Well there was also an email about doing adoption announcements on an email list that I hang out on.)

Once I decided to adopt, I slowly told my closest friends and family. I told them one at a time. I talked to them when it seemed natural. Once my plans firmed up, I sent out an adoption announcement. It was an eight page letter.

It was too wordy because I was excited about my plans. But I had tons of positive reactions. A note about the sperm question... I was (and still am) a single woman. I thought that I received the sperm question (multiple times) because I was single.

Family and Friends

I am in the process of adopting a child from Ukraine. You are receiving this note for a couple of reasons.

I want to share my joy and fears. Right now I am full of facts and just a little on edge. The adoption process is intensive and requires me to open my life to total strangers. I have come to believe that if everyone had to do a "home study" in order to have children there would only be 2 or 3 children on the planet.

Because I am a little nervous about the adoption, I tend to babble when anyone asks me about the adoption. In other words I have been answering simple questions with 1/2-hour dissertations. I am trying to provide basic information about my adoption journey.

I started thinking about adopting a child February 1998. I started seriously researching adoption July 1999. I started seriously pursuing adoption in December 1999.

I have told a few friends, family members and co-workers. I have discovered there are common reactions and questions to my adoption announcement. If I have missed your reaction or question please let me know so I can add it to the list. (grin)

How nice. Congratulations

Don't you know about sperm banks? Why are you having a child outside of a heterosexual relationship?

Why adopt outside of the United States?

I thought you were adopting from China.

Why Ukraine? How does the adoption process work?

Do you want a girl or boy? How old is the child going to be? Is the child going to be healthy?

Isn't adoption expensive? Are you buying a baby?

Where is Ukraine?

What about the nuclear radiation?

How can I help?

If you have any interest in reading the answers to my questions let me know. Post a comment or email me at angelaw at ouradopt dot com if you think I should post the remaining 7 pages. I wrote the letter over 8 years ago which is why I am hesitating to post it. I am not sure it is relevant to international adoption today.

Nebraska Safe Haven Law - Child Dumping

2008-09-25T13:21:04-05:00

Oh mother of God.... The state of Nebraska passed a "Safe Haven" law in July. I really hate these laws because I believe they are band-aids, show pieces. Women in crisis don't need this kind of help. Dead and abandonded babies continue to be found in states with "Safe Haven" laws.

''Safe haven laws, though rooted in magnanimity, have not proven to be effective because they are not designed in such a way that will affect the decisions and actions of those most likely to discard infants," Krall wrote in a recent report, titled ''Discarded Infants and Neonaticide."

From: 'Safe haven' law has doubters

Nebraska really screwed up. Their "Safe Haven" law allows any child (anyone under 19 years of age) to be dropped off at a hospital. Seriously... you can just decide you don't want to parent your children and the state will take them. What an awful way to enter foster care. Actually there isn't a good way to enter foster care. But can you image being that child... knowing that you were NOT wanted.

AmyAdoptee pointed out that teenagers were being dropped off under this new law. And now 11 more children were abandoned at Nebraska hospitals. A father dropped off nine of his children who were 1 to 17 years of age. Prior teenagers were dropped off because of "behavior" issues. One child was actually placed into the hospital for evaluation.

16 children have been dumped at hospitals since the July 2008. The state legislature is thinking about changing their law so that only infants (1 year or less) are acceptable for dumping.