Giving Up Baby

Laury Oaks is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Feminist Studies and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"A thoughtful and much-needed reproductive justice analysis of 'safe haven' laws and how they are usedand misusedin whose interests, and at whose cost." - Barbara Katz Rothman,City University of New York "Oaks shows us once again what a sharp feminist eye can reveal when trained on a decent-sounding but ill-considered social policy. Systematically and persuasively, she demonstrates how baby safe haven laws reinforce conservative anti-abortion and pro-adoption policies in our fetal-obsessed society. Her lucid, riveting account keeps the reproductive justice framework vividly at the center of analysis, illuminating how the laws unwittingly reinforce harmful stereotypes about who makes a good (or bad) mother. Boldly, bravely, and with a keen eye for detail, Oaks keeps us focused on the reforms we need to make to allow all parents to raise children with dignity and equality. She offers a real role model of feminist scholarship." - Lynn Morgan,author of Icons of Life: A Cultural History of Human Embryos "Giving Up Babyserves as a firm foundation for future inquiry into the politics, both formal and informal, of safe haven laws through the lens of reproductive justice. Oaks skillful consolidation of research into streamlined and easy-to-understand chapters effectively illustrates the complex and intertwined nature of politics, culture, race, class, and gender in these laws." (Feminist Collections) "The author skillfully portrays the contradictions and hypocrisies of the SHL movement. She documents supporters often-vehement opposition to abortion and sex education, their hostility to formal adoption, and their refusal to acknowledge the institutional and socioeconomic reasons why millions of US families live in poverty." (Choice) "Oaks analysis intersects with the larger story of adoption in the UnitedStatesparticularly its commodification, even as infants are understood as & priceless. She shows evocatively that the supply-and-demand exigencies of adoption dovetail withimaginaries of good and bad mothers, as they do with constructions of maternal love." (American Anthropologist) "[Oaks] demonstrates quite clearly and powerfully that American safe haven policies represent a tangle of cultural, political, legal, and religious ideas and forces about class, age, gender, motherhood, and race." (Anthropology Review Quarterly) "[Oaks] Provides a feminist analysis of the social politics of legal infant abandonment in advocacy and media discourses surrounding safe haven laws." (Journal of Economic Literature) "Oaks skillfully navigates the complex web of issues, from class politics to notions of maternal love, that intersect with safe haven laws." (Pacific Standard)

• Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Safe Haven Laws Are Not Only about 1 Saving Babies 1. The Work of Saving Babies' Lives and Souls 47 2. Girls at Risk of Dumping Their Newborns 75 3. Relinquishing Motherhood: How and Why Safe Haven 117 Surrenders Happen 4. The Unsurpassed Adoption Value of Safe Haven Babies 165 Conclusion: Safe Haven Laws and Advancing 203 Reproductive Justice Notes 223 References 233 Index 265 About the Author 275