Safe Haven Law UPDATE #6: A Father Again!!

Remember last fall's big controversy surrounding Nebraska's Safe Haven Law? Because of poor wording, between July and November of 2008, some 35 children were dropped off at hospitals and other such "safe havens", abandoned by parents who felt they could no longer adequately care for their children. The original intent was to protect babies under 30 days of age, but some teenagers were getting dumped off due to a possible interpretation of the law to include teenagers. That snafu has since been fixed. (Go here, here, here and here for prior postings.)

A particularly difficult day was back in September of 2008 when eleven children had been abandoned in one day -- 9 from one family! Last week came the shocking news that that father is now expecting twins!!!! Here's the story from FoxNews:

Father Who Ditched Nine Kids Via Safe Haven Law
Has Twins On the Way

The Nebraska man who abandoned his nine children under the state's Safe Haven law last year is expecting to become the father of twins, FOXNews.com has learned.

Gary Staton, 37, became a single father in February 2007 when his wife, RebelJane, died of a cerebral aneurysm shortly after giving birth to the couple's ninth child. Unable to handle the burden alone, Staton made national news more than a year later on Sept. 24 when he dropped off his children — ages 1 to 17 — at a hospital in Omaha. According to the law at the time, parents could hand children up to age 18 over to state custody without prosecution. Legislators would later amend the law to limit its reach to infants up to 30 days old.

Joanne Manzer — the wife of RebelJane's father, Jack Manzer — told FOXNews.com that Staton informed his children last week that he's expecting to become a father again with his new girlfriend, a woman named Gail.

"I was told she's pregnant with twins," Manzer told FOXNews.com. "[Staton] told them the last time he visited them in Lincoln, that his girlfriend Gail was pregnant. He even showed them the ultrasound picture."

Staton, who could not be reached for comment for this article, declined to discuss his girlfriend's pregnancy when the Omaha World-Herald reported on Sunday that he would become a father again. Details of a multiple birth and the woman's name were not included in that report, but in an e-mail to the newspaper, Staton said, "Do you think I'm going to raise this one alone?"

Joanne Manzer said Staton's seven youngest children are staying with their mother's aunt, who plans on adopting them. The two oldest boys, she said, are living with a 75-year-old woman in Omaha so they can graduate high school. Despite the revelation that Staton will be a father again, Manzer said the children aren't angry.

"They don't seem to be, they're doing fine," Manzer said. "He goes up there for visits — they still have a connection. They kind of understood what he did, he was stressed with everything else."

Asked if she and RebelJane's father felt differently, Manzer replied, "It's his life. He can do whatever he wants as long as he doesn't hurt the kids anymore. That's all we care about at this point."

Manzer said she wishes that Staton had turned to his family for help instead of abandoning the children at Omaha's Creighton University Medical Center.

"He did what he did, but we wish he had done it a different way," she said. "If he had come to anyone in the family, we would've figured something out. He didn't come to us though, and I saw him the morning he dropped off the kids."

She said the children wouldn't have been left in the hands of the state, if the children's mother had survived her last pregnancy and become a single mom.

...

In November, after its first special session in more than five years, Nebraska's legislators revised the safe haven law to apply only to babies up to 30 days old. Gov. Dave Heineman said the original law had "serious unintended consequences" after 36 children — ranging from 1 to 17 years old — were abandoned at hospitals, including children brought to Nebraska from as far away as California and Washington. Twenty-two of the 36 children were age 13 or older, and eight were ages 10-12, according to state records.

"Revising the law to create a 'baby safe haven' in Nebraska does two things," Heineman said in a statement last November. "First, it puts the focus back on the original intent of these laws, which is saving newborn babies and exempting a parent from prosecution for child abandonment. It should also prevent those outside the state from bringing their children to Nebraska in an attempt to secure services."

The last use of the state's safe haven law was on Nov. 21, the last day it applied to children up to age 18. A 14-year-old boy from Yolo County, Calif., was abandoned at the Kimball County Hospital by his mother, who drove roughly 1,200 miles to get there.

...

Kathie Osterman, a spokeswoman for Nebraska's Department of Health and Human Services, said the Staton family had received more than $995,000 in government aid as of last fall, including an estimated $600,000 in food stamps and more than $100,000 in Medicaid.

Safe Haven laws have been passed in all 50 states since 1999, according to the National Safe Haven Alliance. The District of Columbia is the only place in the U.S. without such a provision ...

So much for all the advertising about safe sex and clinics offering free birth control ... Honestly, couldn't the guy have put a condom on his Johnny Hancock?!?