New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women calls for improved social support for unplanned pregnancies.

A proposed safe haven law is not the ideal response to the recent rise of newborn murders in the province, says the head of a New Brunswick women’s agency.

“Our services for young parents and pregnant teenagers are very skeletal,” says Rosella Melanson, executive director of the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

“There’s a wide range of issues that need to be addressed. We’ve had a rash number of child abandonment deaths, but it’s hard to say what the main reason or problem here is.”

The bill, proposed by Oromocto Conservative MLA Jody Carr, would allow parents to surrender their newborn child to a hospital within 72 hours of birth, without the fear of criminal abandonment charges. The child would then be placed in a provincial adoption program. While the law is popular in most U.S states, it has yet to be implemented in any Canadian province.

Since first raised in May 2009, the proposed bill has gained widespread support from provincial Tory leader David Alward and has faced little resistance from the Liberals.

The proposal came on the heels of the discovery of a dead newborn found near Salisbury in May, which sparked outrage and heartbreak in the surrounding area. In January 2009, a St. Andrews couple were brought into custody after stabbing their newborn son and abandoning him in the snow.

“Cases where parents choose to murder a newborn are very rare,” Alward says. “But we need to provide that opportunity for moms and dads in distress.

“That parent isn’t abandoning their child, they’re giving the child a chance to live.”

But Melanson says the government should focus on improving social support for unprepared pregnancies, which she says is far more effective than a safe haven law.

“New Brunswick has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country,” Melanson says. “We need more social support systems. Emergency contraception and Planned Parenthood are hard to get and abortion is very hard to access. We need to be concentrating on these things.”

Melanson cautions against presenting the law as a fix-all for infant homicide, noting that the law hasn’t been very successful when implemented.

“There’s literature that says these safe haven laws are very rarely used, and they’re they’re not used by those you’d want to use them,” she says. “The people that tend to resort to [killing their child] are the ones that are unaware or in denial of their pregnancy, and they’re not the ones that are going to get their act together in time to go to the hospital to use this law.”

The proposed law does not specify whether the consent of both parents is required to surrender the child, which raises the issue of parental rights.

“What condition is the woman in [when she surrenders the baby] and how do you determine if she is in the right frame of mind to make this decision?” Melanson says. “What are they going to do when a mother comes up asking where her baby is in a situation where the father didn’t get her consent?”

Alward admits there are problems associated with the law, particularly since it stipulates that parents aren’t required to leave their names or medical history. While these are legitimate problems, Alward says the bottom line is saving the life of a child.

“We realize there are these concerns, and they will be discussed and addressed in legislature so the law can be perfected to best serve our province,” he says. “What we’re trying to do is save the life of the child.”

The standing committee on law amendments will debate the law in legislature November 9 and 10. If passed by the Liberals, Alward expects to see the safe haven law in place before the Spring session, making it the first of its kind in Canada.