Rob and Donna Leavitt with their children Tessa , 5, left, and Alia, 9, Thursday, April 28, 2011. Tessa was a "safely surrendered" baby. (Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer)
At a West Hollywood park, watching her not-quite 2-year-old son effortlessly swish a basketball into a hoop almost twice his height, Barbara Gallen beamed.
For her, Tal was not only a "basketball phenom" but "an answer to a prayer."
The unmarried television writer in her fifties decided to adopt after realizing her desire to be a mother would never go away.
In the spring of 2008, the county Department of Children and Family Services gave her custody of a newborn boy who had been dropped off at a hospital under the Safe Surrender law.
"I never had any doubt, from the moment I got the call, that this was my child," said Gallen, who lives in the Miracle Mile section of L.A. "It's been a match made in heaven."
Tal is among 83 children in Los Angeles County over the last 10 years whose birth parents or legal guardians have taken advantage of a state law that decriminalized infant abandonment in certain circumstances.
The Safe Surrender Law, also called the Safe Haven Law, has been in effect since Jan. 1, 2001, offering an alternative to those considering throwing a baby away - literally - in Dumpsters, toilets, parking lots, rail yards, crawl spaces, the ocean.
It allows birth parents and legal guardians to give up a newborn to staff at a hospital, fire station or other designated
locations - no questions asked.The child must be no more than three days old, and bear no signs of abuse or neglect.
When the law was first passed, it was little known or used in Los Angeles County, recalled Supervisor Don Knabe. It then became somewhat of a personal crusade for him after he watched, with horror, the news coverage about "Baby Andrew."
That newborn, his umbilical cord still attached, was discovered crying in a trash can in Monrovia on Jan. 19, 2002. His teenage mother had wrapped him in a plastic bag and dumped him headfirst into the garbage.
"I went to my staff and asked, 'What can we do for this never to happen again?' Knabe said. "We found that the law - Safe Surrender - was already in the books but nobody knew about it."
Within a month, his office had launched a media blitz and set up a toll-free hot line, 877-BABY-SAFE.
Of the 83 children that have been safely surrendered in Los Angeles County since then, 78 have been or are in the process of being adopted, according to a new report from the county's Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect.
The other five children were reclaimed by their birth mothers during the two-week window provided by the law. One case involved an emergency medical technician who changed her mind about giving up her baby after learning that motherhood would not jeopardize her military career.
Separate from those cases, however, ICAN's report also noted that 66 newborns were abandoned over the decade that Safe Surrender has been in place.
The list included a baby believed born inside a K-Mart bathroom and left in a trash can at the store.
Only 13 of those babies survived; the other 53 were either killed before being dumped, or succumbed to exposure.
The true number of deaths due to abandonment may never be known, however, since the data reflects only the children whose bodies were found.
The tragedy is exacerbated by the fact that each of those newborns would have been welcomed by other families.
Bill Thomas, who oversees adoptions at DCFS, said the agency has 400 to 500 children through age 17 waiting to be placed, but it is much easier for find homes for babies than for older children.
"There are always families willing to take them in," Thomas said.
Some experts, however, point out potential flaws or misuse of Safe Surrender.
Adam Pertman, head of a New York-based adoption research group, questions the effectiveness of the program.
"These laws were passed to save babies who are left in toilets and trash cans, but what we know from the research and from experience is that women who leave their babies in horrible places are not in states of mind that are cogent, thoughtful," Pertman said in a recent interview.
"It doesn't track that they will respond in a normal, cogent manner to a billboard, a campaign, an informational pamphlet that says 'drop your kid off at the police station or the hospital.'"
Pertman is executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a national nonprofit research and advocacy group with headquarters in New York, and author of the book "Adoption Nation."
He warned that Safe Surrender could lead mothers to abandon their children because it seems easier than receiving parenting counseling or making an adoption plan.
"It sends a signal, especially to young people, that they do not have to assume responsibility for their actions, and that deserting one's children is acceptable," he wrote in a 2003 report entitled "Unintended Consequences: 'Safe Haven' Laws Are Causing Problems, Not Solving Them'."
Pertman pointed out Safe Surrender also denies children the opportunity to learn their genealogical and medical histories, which could have dire consequences on their health.
But ICAN executive director Deanne Tilton Durfee insisted the statistics prove Safe Surrender is working - it just got off to a slow start.
She acknowledged that in the first couple of years after the law was enacted, unsafe abandonments were in the double-digits. Since then, however, the numbers have declined significantly to no more than two or three annually since 2007.
So far this year, there have been zero abandonments.
Durfee also disputed the notion that unmarried teenagers are abusing Safe Surrender.
"The profiles are not consistent at all," she said. "The mothers are basically all races, ages and socio-economic levels, although it would probably be weighted more toward women in their 20 s ... who are isolated, may be working, and already have other children."
Gallen believes more should be done to ensure the law is effective in protecting newborns.
She is eager to tell Tal's story in hopes of showing women distraught over an unwanted pregnancy that they can give up the baby without fear of being prosecuted.
"No Shame, No Blame, No Names" is the slogan of the Safe Surrender campaign.
Gallen herself feels nothing but appreciation for Tal's birth mother.
"She did the right thing," Gallen said. "God bless the young woman who understood that she wasn't able to care for this child and did the very best thing for him, so that he made his way to a mother who absolutely is so grateful to care for him."
Gallen does not want Tal to be an only child, and she might get that prayer answered too. The boy turns out to have two brothers in the foster care system, and she hopes to adopt them both.
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