Newborn Left At Hospital
By Holly Angelo
Originally published in the Union-News, February 9, 2002
SPRINGFIELD — At first, the staff on duty at 3 a.m. yesterday at Wesson Women and Infant's Unit at Baystate Medical Center thought the tall young man was carrying in an armful of towels.
Upon closer inspection, they saw a tiny, premature baby girl bundled inside the layers of cloth. With the words "my girlfriend just had a baby" only seconds out of his mouth, the young man turned and said he was going to get his girlfriend. Instead, he ran to his car parked on Chestnut Street and sped away.
"At least he brought the baby to the hospital," said Sgt. John M. Bobianski, a member of the Police Department's crime prevention unit that is investigating the early-morning incident.
The baby is about 1½ months premature and is in fair condition at the hospital. The state Department of Social Services has taken custody of the infant and is hoping the parents will reconsider their actions. If not, the baby will be placed in a pre-adoptive home.
Police have little to go on, except the man is black, in his late teens or early 20s, was wearing jeans and a dark windbreaker and is tall—around 6 feet 2 inches. He drove off in a mid-size tan or gray car. Police spent the day calling local high schools and clinics to try to get a lead on who the mother might be.
"We want to find out who the mother is," Bobianski said. "If we have to, we'll call every ob-gyn (obstetrician-gynecologist) in the city."
In all but 15 states, it is legal for mothers to drop off their newborns at hospitals and other "safe havens" without fear of prosecution, but Massachusetts is not one of those states, according to Timothy Jaccard, the director of Children of Hope Safe Haven Program for New York.
There is a bill before Massachusetts' House Ways and Means Committee that would create a "safe haven" law that would allow such action without prosecution. Neighboring Connecticut and New York have such legislation.
It now appears the young man who panicked early yesterday morning tried to find a "safe haven" for his baby.
Jaccard contacted the Union-News after learning of the abandoned baby at Baystate. He received a call at 1:50 a.m. yesterday on his agency's hotline from a "nervous and young" male near the Connecticut border who said he wanted to give up his girlfriend's baby. Jaccard, thinking the man was in Connecticut, told him it was OK for him to drop the baby off at the hospital.
"He said there was a hospital really close by," Jaccard said. "It was his intent to relinquish the baby into a safe haven program. If he didn't do what he did, I feel we'd be hearing a story that the baby had been found in a dumpster."
That is exactly what police, hospital staff and DSS are glad didn't happen. They all agreed the alternative could have been much worse. Twenty-one-year-old Amie Sorel of Ware is accused of choosing such an alternative.
Last week, police charged the young woman with manslaughter in the death of her son, Dante. They say she gave birth to the boy at her apartment in October, wrapped him in a towel and stuffed his body in a closet for a few days before tossing him into the Ware River. Sorel pleaded innocent to the charge. Yesterday, her pre-trial conference was rescheduled to March 8 and it was announced that a psychiatric evaluation had found her capable of standing trial.
Inside the Ware courtroom yesterday sat Michael D. and Jean L. Morrisey, a couple from Lexington who are with the Massachusetts chapter of the Bonnie Babies Foundation. The Australian-based foundation is an advocate of the proposed safe haven law for Massachusetts.
"We're finding most of these cases are young women who have hidden their pregnancies and have panicked," Michael Morrisey said. "There could have been a good escape for this young lady (Sorel), but because of the inactivity of the Legislature it didn't happen."
State Rep. Benjamin Swan, D-Springfield, is co-sponsor of the safe haven bill that has sat in the House Ways and Means Committee for the past seven months.
"We have a reason to push it out of House Ways and Means," Swan said. "It will save human lives. If that young lady in Ware had had a safe haven situation, we might have had a baby that's alive."
It is the second time in five months the city of Springfield has had to deal with an abandoned baby. An infant was left on a pew at St. Catherine of Siena Church on Sept. 1. The mother never came forward and the tot is now in a pre-adoptive home chosen by DSS.
DSS said it deals with just a handful of abandoned babies each year.
"We were very grateful this baby was taken to a hospital where it could receive medical care," DSS spokeswoman Carol A. Yelverton said yesterday. "She looks great. She came in with a low body temperature, but she's fine now."
Yelverton said the baby will be in the hospital for a while. She urged the parents to come forward as soon as possible.
"It's the best opportunity to come forward if they've reconsidered," she said. "If the birth parents don't come forward, the baby will be placed in a pre-adoptive home."
Anyone with information on the birth parents should call the Police Department's crime prevention unit at 787-6352.
