Buses in Lancaster County now carry a message of hope, as the Safe Haven campaign gets moving with the help of Donna Carr (left), of Lancaster General Hospital, and Andrea Brown, of the United Way.
The Safe Haven campaign has presence at Park City Mall.
Shame eats at her like a cancer.
Who can she tell?
What should she do?
As the clock ticks, the woman hiding her pregnancy becomes more desperate.
But as she waits at the bus stop, an unexpected option arrives on wheels.
Plastered on the side of a Red Rose Transit Authority bus is a rolling billboard displaying the message of Safe Haven, which gives parents legal, safe and confidential alternatives to abandoning their newborns.
Visible on the boarding side of 20 RRTA buses through May, and again in September and October, the 88-by-30-inch color ads were spearheaded by the 12-member all-volunteer Safe Haven Task Force, formed in 2005 as an outgrowth of the Lancaster Coalition for Healthy Mothers/Healthy Babies.
Safe Haven bus ads, conveying a very public message about an intensely private issue, direct parents to the statewide Secret Safe hot line, (866) 921-SAFE, or Web site, www.SecretSafe.org.
Now the Safe Haven word is out.
But she can still be safe with her secret.
***
Enacted in 2001, the state Newborn Protection Act, or "safe haven" legislation, allows a parent to leave a newborn up to 28 days old in the care of any Pennsylvania hospital without being criminally liable or having to disclose a name — unless the child is a victim of abuse.
According to task-force member Sue Savage, of Abel/Savage Marketing & Communications, bus ads are an effective vehicle to reach women faced with an unwanted pregnancy.
Sixty-six percent of the ridership is female, and 43 percent of riders are ages 20 to 40, says Jennifer L. Boley, RRTA marketing manager.
In most cases, women who abandon their babies are unwed and 15 to 25 years old, Savage says. They come from all areas and backgrounds.
RRTA buses make an average of 7,000 trips daily throughout Lancaster County, Boley says, and have increasingly spread the advertising word about everything from insurance to community events.
In addition to the bus ads, the Safe Haven Task Force has helped put a display with educational materials in the Park City Center food court through September and set up 15-second on-screen spots at local theaters.
The promotional campaign is funded by a $25,000 grant from United Way of Lancaster County's Success by 6 early-childhood initiative.
The RRTA bus ads, which are installed by Direct Media Inc., which has a regional office in Delaware, range in price from around $100 to several thousand dollars, depending on size and placement.
Donna Carr, nurse care coordinator for Healthy Beginnings Plus and a task-force member, says the outreach, particularly on buses, is a means to a better end.
"They're large, roving billboards. Very powerful."
***
In October, a baby girl was found dead in a city Dumpster. On New Year's Eve 2003, a newborn who came to be known as "Baby Allison" was found dead in a burn barrel in Strasburg Township, her throat slashed.
To date, both cases are unsolved.
"These deaths are tragic and unnecessary," says Success By 6 director Pixie Berman. "Women in our community need to know they can surrender their infants to any hospital in the county, with no questions asked."
Elsewhere in the state, a newborn was found abandoned on the doorstep of an Abington home in November, with a note that read, "Can you please take to the hospital. It's not that I don't love you. I just can't take care of you. love you."
The baby survived.
A woman in Lansdowne phoned the state Safe Haven hot line in October and said, "I left a baby in a stairwell in Lansdowne."
The caller hung up without providing any other information, and a baby never was found.
***
Local parents can bring unwanted infants to bassinets, or "safe haven stations," with call buttons outside emergency departments at Lancaster General Hospital, Lancaster General Women & Babies Hospital, Heart of Lancaster Regional Medical Center and Lancaster Regional Medical Center.
Ephrata Community Hospital has trained all personnel in Safe Haven protocol.
The stations include safe-haven literature, and parents have the option of filling out a medical-history form. Hospital staff take protective custody of the baby, perform a medical evaluation, inform police and turn the infant over to the county's Children & Youth agency. Parents who change their minds can contact the agency.
According to police, five newborns have been relinquished at hospitals under the Safe Haven of Pennsylvania program since 2005 — none in Lancaster County but one in York County — and all the babies have been adopted.
There are no state statistics available on the number of abandoned infants who have been discovered.
Forty-eight states have some form of safe-haven legislation.
***
While task-force members are passionate about publicizing the Safe Haven law, they say they face profound limitations, mainly lack of funding.
The state Department of Public Welfare was initially charged with promoting the safe-haven legislation, which grew out of a voluntary Pittsburgh program. But to date, there has been little state money allocated for outreach.
"It's a wonderful law, but if nobody knows about it, and young women in crisis don't know that it exists, what are you going to do?" Carr says.
While publicity is important, some argue that parents who make the emotionally charged decision to give up a baby still may be reluctant to do so in a public place. Pennsylvania chose hospitals as a dropoff point due to 24-hour access to medical care, Carr says.
The Success By 6 venture grant was underwritten by LGH, Lancaster Osteopathic Health Foundation, St. Joseph Health Ministries and the Ware family.
"This is not something United Way can fund on an unlimited basis, but getting the message out there to the community is important, not only in Lancaster but across the state," Carr says.
"This is slow, hard, persistent work," Savage says. "It not something you 'fix.' As long as there are human beings having sex, it's going to be there."
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