Nebraska Loves You. And Your Kids.

Have you heard the news out of Nebraska? They’re the last state in the U.S. to pass the “safe-haven” law. A law that allows parents to abandon unwanted children without question within a variable (by state) amount of time, usually 72 hours from birth.

Only instead of giving parents 72 hours, Nebraska’s law gives the parents 19 years!

Imagine the ad campaign for this law:

Kid sucks? Drop ‘em off.

Your child a druggie? Let us deal.

Tired of cleaning up after your little slob? We’ll take on the task.

Give us your disrespectful, ungrateful, selfish, self-centered monsters. No questions asked.

What’s even crazier about this law, is that anyone can give the kid up. If you take a vacation and leave your child with a babysitter, and they decide the Friday rave is better than caring for your little beasts — poof! They can be given up!

When I was a kid, my mother’s big threat was: “Wait till your father gets home!” Today it would be something like “Wait till I pack you up and drop you off at the fire department!”

Nuts.

Update (November 26, 2008): Since September, 34 kids were dropped off at Omaha hospitals and none of them were infants (the olders was 17). The law has been rewritten to only permit children as old as 30 days to be dropped off. Finally, some with a brain was taking action.