Deaths continue despite 'safe havens'

[Dale_M]

A story without a happy ending.

Experts disagree why some young women hide their pregnancies and kill their babies when more than 40 states have ``safe haven’’ laws designed to prevent those deaths.

Roger Munns, spokesman for the Iowa Department of Human Services, said not enough people know about Iowa’s safe-haven law … which allows babies to be left at any health care facility, no questions asked, within 14 days of its birth – because there is no money to publicize the law and teach women about it.

But Cheryl Meyer, professor at Wright State University School of Professional Psychology in Dayton, Ohio, said safe-haven laws miss the point. Most young women who kill their babies within 24 hours do so because they have denied the pregnancy and are panicked.

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