AMY PAULIN IN THE NEWS
Monday, June 22, 2009
Providing Hope for Abandoned Babies
By Joye Brown [Newsday]
Timothy Jaccard was on the job Sunday evening when he got a telephone call.
There was a newborn in a shoebox near the mailboxes in the foyer of an apartment building in Hempstead.
The girl was wrapped in two onesies. Her 5-pound, 7-ounce body had been wiped clean of blood.
The infant was on her way to Nassau University Medical Center by the time Jaccard pulled in front of the building.
Jaccard, of Wantagh, knows a lot about newborns, and far too much about what can happen when they are abandoned. More than a decade ago, he and other paramedics across the region found themselves answering a spate of calls about newborns, abandoned and dead.
"Back then, it was like 16 babies a year and we were burying one of them a month," Jaccard said Monday.
Soon he had had enough. Jaccard founded the AMT Children of Hope Foundation, a national organization based in Mineola. And, with help from two other activists, he successfully pushed for "safe haven" laws around the nation that let desperate parents leave unwanted newborns someplace safer than a lobby.
"I wish she had called," Jaccard said Monday, although no one actually knows who left the baby - man or woman. Although an apartment lobby isn't considered a "safe haven," as a hospital would be, at least a call to 911 might have helped protect the parent from a police investigation and potential criminal charge, Jaccard said.
New York's safe haven law isn't perfect, of course. Although it protects someone from criminal charges as long as he or she leaves the baby in a safe place and reports it, it doesn't release social services from its obligation to find the parent and possibly file an abandonment case.
There was a time when local mothers could be convinced to enter hospitals for prenatal care - they often used the same last name: Hope. Then, Jaccard would talk to them about options: Keep the baby, put the child up for adoption or walk away.
In the past 10 years, 128 babies in Brooklyn, Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties went to safe haven. Nine in Nassau and one in Suffolk.
More mothers in the program, however, opted to put their babies up for adoption - which required them to use their legal names, Jaccard said.
Now, he said, some women won't participate because they fear that social services - or parents or abusive boyfriends - will learn their names. And so, too many choose to have babies outside of the hospital.
A bill, sponsored by Assemb. Amy Paulin of Westchester, would amend Family Court law to fix the problem. But it's one of the many measures held hostage by the mess in Albany.
Paulin said Monday she would keep trying. And so will Jaccard, whose group holds fundraisers almost every month to help cover the cost of everything from prenatal care to - when tragedy strikes - funerals for newborns.
Since Sunday, Jaccard has held the child with the black hair and perfect, healthy skin who was found in a shoebox. He's fed her and marveled at her strong, tiny fingers.
"I fell in love," Jaccard said. "I want to take her home, but, you know, I want to take every one of them home."