MASSACHUSETTS

http://www.projo.com/massachusetts/content/projo_20040315_sw15meet.2a3ccd.html

Town Meeting voters to take action tonight on 23 questions.

01:00 AM EST on Monday, March 15, 2004

BY MARK REYNOLDS
Journal Staff Writer


SWANSEA -- The selectmen seek authorization to petition the legislature for a
local law that would let a distraught mother secretly turnover a newborn to
authorities.

Babies less than eight days old could be left at a police station, firehouse or
hospital without any fear of prosecution.

Massachusetts state law does not allow for so-called "safe havens."

If approved by Town Meeting voters and then by the legislature, the proposed
law would allow such havens in Swansea.

Local officials, including Police Chief George Arruda, called for a new
statewide law after a local woman, Barbara O'Leary, told police that she had
found someone else's baby last fall.

O'Leary later acknowledged the baby was hers and the story she told the police
was part of a scheme to give away the baby. She had adopted the strategy in a
moment of personal crisis.

"Since parents are not protected from prosecution for their abandonment of a
newborn or infant," says the written proposal, "the incidents of newborns
discarded into trash receptacles or abandoned in public places will continue to
occur."