This week mothers and family members are dropping their teenagers off at Nebraska hospitals.

Well, we’re all familiar with the “safe haven law”. If you’re not, it’s a law where mothers are able to drop their newborn children off at local hospitals if they cannot care for the child.

Fifty states in the U.S have “safe haven laws” with age limits. Nebraska does not have an age limit; it clearly states that you’re able to drop off your “child” – meaning—youth up to the age of 18.

Personally, I don’t feel these parents are abusing the law; they’re just in need of help. Teenagers nowadays are out of control and are not easy to cooperate with.

Going through the situation I am in right now, I’d love to get dropped off at a hospital instead of being kicked out on the streets. It’s a proven fact kids under the age of 18 that get kicked out of their house end up dead, in jail or on the streets struggling. Rarely do they bounce back and survive this kind of tragedy.

Now that so many kids have gotten dropped off, lawmaker’s are trying to amend the law because if more kids are dropped off the system is going to be full of teenage kids.

But I do feel that these parents took it a little too far, even under their circumstances. It is now mandatory that the parents take family therapy and pay child support if they dropped off their child at a Nebraska hospital.

I feel that they should change the age for “safe haven law” in Nebraska only because now that I think about it, it’s kind of inhumane to be dropping off teenagers just because they’re too much to handle. It’s just a stage in their lives where they are trying to find out who they really are. Everyone’s been through it and the hardest part is just being strong and getting past it.
—Vanessa Vega