Baby Left In Ottawa Hospital

Law Allows Mothers To Release Custody

Originally published by The Kansas City Channel, January 7, 2002

OTTAWA, Kan. — A newborn baby was abandoned and found Monday morning at a Kansas hospital, KMBC 9 News' Emily Aylward reported.

The baby was only a few hours old when she was found. Nurses named her Abby Dawn Doe.

"We still don't know who left the baby here," said Jeffrey Herrman, police chief of the Ottawa Police Department.

Herrman's said his best guess was that the baby was left at an Ottawa hospital by a scared, new mother.

An employee at the hospital found the baby early Monday wrapped in a blanket in a corner inside the double doors of the emergency room.

A new state law designating hospital, fire stations and police departments as places to surrender custody of children may have prompted the mother to leave the newborn, Herrman said.

"It was designed, as I understand it, so that babies weren't put in Dumpsters," Herrman said.

According to the law, whoever left the baby should have made contact with someone inside the hospital before surrendering custody.

Police said they need to talk to the baby's mother to properly identify the baby and provide suitable history for doctors.

While authorities said they don't plan to prosecute the mother, they do note that according the the Newborn Infant Protection Act from 2001, the baby's surrender was not done correctly.