Some Oppose Teaching Safe Surrender Law in Schools

Henderson, N.C. — North Carolina high school students will soon be required to take a class that provides instructions on how to lawfully abandon a newborn. But some people said they worry the new curriculum could increase the number of unplanned pregnancies.

The state's Safe Surrender Law allows mothers to abandon newborns up to 7 days old without legal repercussions as long as the infant is left with a responsible adult, such as at a hospital, fire station or police station.

Vance County has one of the state's highest teen pregnancy rates, with more than 10 percent of girls ages 15 to 19 getting pregnant in 2005, the most recent year for which data is available.

"It is frustrating, and we are seeking ways to improve our teen pregnancy rate," Vance County Health Director Dr. W. Rodwell Drake Jr. said. "Education is the key."

Local school officials said they plan to draft their curriculum on the Safe Surrender Law in the next few weeks before sending it to the Vance County Board of Education for approval. Teachers would begin using the curriculum in the 2008-09 school year.

But some people said teaching students how to abandon unwanted babies could lead to more unplanned pregnancies.

"You never think about the consequences," said Bruce Beck, education minister of Central Baptist Church in Henderson.

Beck also said schools should encourage adoptions instead of abandonment to teens that don't want to raise their newborns. He compared the Safe Surrender Law to placing an infant in a drop box.

"If they're in a drop box, they're going to have to go through the government system of having to find parents. They're going to be temporarily put somewhere, and it's going to be back and forth, back and forth," he said.

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Latest Comments

I'm confused? You can't teach safe sex or abstinence in school but you can teach how to dump a body? Another thing that is odd to me is people seemed more upset about finding all the dead dogs on Michael Vicks property than they do about finding babies in dumpsters.

nowon_yuno
August 15, 2007 6:39 a.m.

If they spend more time teaching safe sex - obvioulsly that is happening - then you wouldn't need to give instructions on how to abandon a child.

@ Nancy......... "This is such BS". Well stated !

shine
August 15, 2007 6:24 a.m.

martini- When I heard the safe surrender law discussed by the news media, they did not mention the part about the responsible adult. I have not read the law, nor do I expect the teenagers who need to use it have.

Half the pregnant teens probably do not attend school anyway, so where are they going to get this information?

us citizen
August 15, 2007 3:25 a.m.

This is so typical of the massive liberal movement in public education, instead of focusing on teaching core subject matter, it's a social agenda in many classrooms.

This is such BS.

Nancy
August 14, 2007 11:09 p.m.

As a high school social studies teacher, I make certain that I cover the Safe Surrender Law. Not out of any attempt to compensate for a lack of parental action or concern,or because any state or local law requires it, but rather to remember the two new borns found in Cumberland Co. not too long ago. Baby Michael--found along side a road, dead. Another baby found dead in a garbage dumpster. All of the arguements about responsibity, teaching abstence or not, the role of parents and educators are well and good. How much good will all this talk be when they find yet another newborn baby dead in the garbage bin? If I can do anything to prevent that, I'll do it.