Charges may be filed after a girl from southwest Iowa was abandoned Tuesday at a hospital in eastern Nebraska. The 14-year-old Council Bluffs girl was left at an Omaha hospital under Nebraska’s controversial safe haven law.
Most states, like Iowa, let newborns be dropped off by stressed parents with no questions asked, but Nebraska’s new law lets any child be left. Since it took effect in July, 17 children have been abandoned across the Husker State, most of them teens or pre-teens.
Another wrinkle in this latest case, the law’s legal protections apparently only apply to Nebraskans, so the person who left the Iowa girl may be facing charges of abandonment or endangerment.