BABY DOE'S HEARTBEAT"

Excerpts from Various Interviews
Note: These interviews are the sole property of Encopa Productions, Reproduction of this material is in copyright violation. This is intended for informative purposes only.

Stewart L. Bell's interview: "The Safe Haven Law is the law that is passed in many states following the lead of the state of Texas which provides that its not criminal for a desperate mother to abandon her baby typically a new born infant at a safe place such as a hospital, a fire station, or police station. So that the baby’s life can be saved. As opposed to many desperate mothers who have historically abandoned their babies in dumpsters or other places where the babies are almost certain to die."

"The main purpose of course is to save the baby’s life. Though we also have a positive impact on many others lives. If the mother abandons the baby or the baby dies, we have the duty to prosecute. Many times that mother will be in prison for life."

Re: "Safe Haven Law"  "...it isn’t completely effective, because we prosecuted a lady who was aware of the safe haven law & nonetheless left her child in a dumpster, so it isn’t completely effective but it certainly has been effective in a few instances & we can discern lives that have been saved."

"The more that people know this is available the more they’re gonna be comfortable taking advantage of it. And of course not only let them know that the law is there but when they have anecdotal instances that they’ve read about where somebody has in fact left the baby & it isn’t a trap."

"My personal plea would be to take advantage of this save that baby & save yourself. If you abandon that baby in an unsafe circumstance you will very likely face charges & serve time in prison."

An anonymous mother who used Project Cuddle: "I was living alone in my one bedroom apartment I was making a little less than $10 an hour and the father and I...we didn’t have a real commitment with each other..."

"I was upset in the beginning, I wanted to have an abortion. In fact I had appointment to get an abortion and I wasn’t really sure about it.  I called a couple of friends and I had one friend that had seen a tape of people getting abortions its called the "Silent Cry." She said that babies even 6 weeks old 8 weeks old in the womb were crying when they were getting aborted. I couldn’t do it. And then I thought about giving him up for adoption but I wanted to make sure he would have life and I was scared that he might end up with the wrong people, and I was worried about what if he ended up in a foster home."

"I decided that the best thing I could do for him was to keep him and go to school--put myself through school so that way I could get a better paying job and support him."

"My grandma & grandpa wrote me letters telling me that if I kept him he would end up on the streets. That I wouldn’t make it, they said that statistics say that a woman—a single
mother trying to make it on their own that they normally don’t make it. That normally their
kids end up in jail, they end up on drugs."

Re: A Project Cuddle Volunteer: "She supported me with my decision because I wasn’t sure if I had made the right decision to keep him. I was going through that the whole pregnancy. I was scared about how I would feel about him. I was worried about--because of everything I went through that I wouldn’t love him that I wouldn’t care for him. She wrote me, supported me—told me that and that it would be hard but she said that I can get through it...she helped take me to my dr.’s appointment and she helped try to find a mechanic to fix my car and she got my son a bassinet & she got some blankets and some clothes for him."

Re: "Safe Haven Law": "...if they’re not ready to support them and they’re not ready to be a mother then I think that they should—if they have the option—I think they should do it, instead of throwing their baby away somewhere. I know some women go through so much when they’re pregnant, I know that some of them look at their—look at them like they’re animals but they’re not animals they’re babies. They should not throw their children away because they’re still children, they’re still babies, and even if they don’t care for them and they don’t love them they’re still human beings and they’re not the ones that made the mistakes, we are. We shouldn’t punish them for our mistakes."

Debbe Magnusen, Founder of Project Cuddle - What Project Cuddle is: "Basically, a girl calls in, we find out what her needs are, we’re going to find out how far a long she is, if she’s had any prenatal care, we’re going to encourage getting a volunteer helping her get her to a doctor to the first time. Many times it’s at the end of the pregnancy, it can be a little challenging, I think one of our biggest challenge is to find an obstetrician who’ll take a girl who’s 8 ½ months along to have prenatal care. That’s always a little bit of an issue for us but we’ve been very fortunate and walk through that so far. Then basically, if she wants to tell her family or not, we try to work w/ her and find out what are her plans, keep the baby…if we can help her find a solution…shelter…whatever and just follow along with what her needs are & focus on her needs, get the baby safely delivered. That’s our goal."

"About 63% of the girls who call us & think that there’s no hope, no help, end up keeping their babies. And its been exciting because we’ve been able to get them volunteers to get them mentors to help with parenting and they end up keeping their babies. Some of them end up getting kicked out during the process of telling their families so they end up needing shelter. 50% have another child and so that’s why they’ve hidden this pregnancy because the love of the first child and the fear of their parents saying we helped you w/ the first one and if you do it again you’re gonna get kicked out. So we have to come up with adoptions and so many of them will end up keeping their babies but relocate others will have their parents support and the others will give up their babies for adoptions. We try to have families standing by ready to go, as soon as they’ve delivered. We try to work w/ the girls and see what they want and in a family and then get families certified and talk with and see who fits with whom."

Angel Waters, of Project Cuddle: "The average age is 21. A lot of them, over 50% are in college, they’ve got good grades. Most of them are nursing students for some reason, a lot of them come from really good backgrounds. Unfortunately, most of them come from single family homes, either them living with the mother, the father isn’t around. They’re not the typical 15-16 year old girl who everybody thinks its the teenager that’s more prone to do this. It’s the 21-22 year old in college, that’s so afraid to let mom & dad & everybody down, that she doesn’t know what to do & she conceals it because she’s so afraid of being condemned for whatever happens. If it’s a rape situation, one night stand, or her & her boyfriend weren’t ready, she just doesn’t want to disappoint and let people down. So a lot of people target the wrong age group. They’re more out to target the younger girls & the more poverty stricken areas, and there its more socially acceptable to be 14/15 to have 2 or 3 kids and live that way. When you’re in college and you’ve got parents that expect a lot from you it’s a lot harder to break the news to them because...it’s just the disappointment factor."

Re the psychology: "Most of them are in denial that they’re even pregnant. Most of them that I talked to hate their baby, whether its been rape, or an unplanned pregnancy, an affair, incest. They’re really just are angry, they think that everybody, including the baby. Unfortunately, the baby is the one that suffers. They’re very distant, they haven’t told a lot of people, a lot of it is just between themselves and maybe the baby’s father if the baby’s father is known. They don’t really reveal a lot to a lot of people. So when I talk to them on the hot-line, its usually very concealed, its not a known fact around town or even best friends. Most of the girls are so ashamed of being pregnant that they don’t even tell friends. Its very hard, that’s why gaining their trust is so important to us because they don’t have anybody else that they want to talk to. Its just basically, them calling a hot-line & sharing with us their secret for the first time. So we want to be careful w/ issuing a bond of trust & confidentiality."

Coroner, Ron Flud: "When you’re talking about a small child, a newborn child, the possibilities for survival are minimal at best....The manner of death & cause of death. Usually the cause of death is going to be undetermined because they’re so small we can’t do a full autopsy on them and make a determination of what they died from. Sometimes we can. Sometimes we can determine that they died from exposure or from asphyxia. All the cases where you find a child abandoned in a dumpster or something like that, the manner of death is going to sited be homicide."

Linda Dean, Executive Director of Women's Resource Center Las Vegas - "The Women’s Resource Center used to be a local Crisis Pregnancy Center. What we do here is we’re a non-profit, volunteer based organization that offers free pregnancy tests, we offer material assistance, & emotional support & we also have a great referral network for women & men who find themselves in crisis related pregnancy situations.

Re: "Safe Haven Law ": "We don’t really have a direct interface yet. I’d like to see more of that. As Executive Dir. one of my jobs is to be aware of legislation and what’s going on in the area of trying to save the lives of little unborn children and those that are just born as in the case in the safe haven law. But what we can do and what I fully expect to do, now that more of this is coming out, is to inform our volunteers & those that work with us, there are places where these young women can drop their babies after they’re born. They don’t have to put them in dumpsters. They don’t have to leave them abandoned some place. They can go without fear of legal liability of being thrown in prison or whatever else and they can take those babies to hospitals, fire stations or police stations at least that’s the parameters I’m aware of right now. So the way we will work with them is to inform our volunteers who will inform those women who are coming in with crisis pregnancies and get the word out to our community."

Nevada State Senator, Ray Rawson (penned the Safe Haven Law): "Originally, I had a nurse from Carson Tahoe Hospital, that was familiar with a situation I think in Fallon Nevada, where a baby was abandoned and died as a result of being abandoned and she came to me and said you know we need something to try to change that. We started to do research on that, we found that there were bills in other states that approached this in different ways. There weren’t huge numbers of babies saved by it, but there were a number of babies that were saved. So we went in with that idea that we’ll provide another alternative for the people in Nevada so they don’t have to throw their baby away."

"We’ve gone through a stage where it was politically incorrect to talk about orphanages and the state now has essentially a foster care system where they can take children that don’t have parents or that are abandoned, the fact that the state’s involved in that creates a fear for some people. If the state’s involved then they’re going to prosecute, I don’t want to go to jail for this. They’re just afraid of the system. And so, maybe if there was less fear involved when it was a church, they could leave it on the church’s door step and nothing further would be said about it. In a way, we're trying to create that kind of a situation where a mother can leave her baby on the doorstep of a fire-dept. or police precinct or a hospital, a physician’s office, and know that the baby will be taken care of and have a better life. And I’m still going to be anonymous and so in a way we’re re-creating that where the state for a long time has …frightened people."

"I think the law specifically allows just a few places a baby can be dropped off. My reading of that is if a woman leaves a baby where it’s known the baby will get immediate care, then no prosecutor would proceed with prosecution on that. Because the intent of the law has been the safety of the child not the prosecution of the woman. I think the situation where you would see prosecution is if the woman throws the baby into the dumpster, it’s not likely the baby would be saved and if that’s discovered, I think there’ll be anger on the part of prosecutors, I think they’ll pursue those kinds of women. So it’s every bit to their advantage to go to the proper places and if that ends up being a church that isn’t listed in the legislation, my sense of that is: it’s still the spirit of the law. It still helps."