Lingle’s veto gets
national attentionThe governor will not pardon
mothers who abandon newborns
Two months after Gov. Linda Lingle's little-publicized veto of a bill granting amnesty to mothers who abandon their newborn babies at hospitals, her decision is gaining national attention.
In June, Lingle refused to sign a bill allowing a mother to anonymously drop off her baby at a hospital within 72 hours of birth without criminal prosecution.
Similar laws were on the books in most other states, but Lingle's veto -- one of 50 she made after the legislative session -- got little attention, even by the bill's proponents, until Thursday.
Albert R. Hunt, a political columnist for the Wall Street Journal, made Lingle's move the focus of his "Politics & People" opinion feature. He began, "I've never met Linda Lingle, the governor of Hawaii, but I'm a fan."
The attention continued yesterday with Lingle appearing on a segment of MSNBC's "Scarborough Country." Host Joe Scarborough told the governor, "We appreciate your political courage."
Lingle said in a phone interview yesterday that "it was interesting to me that there was that time lag" between the veto and the publicity.
Lawmakers who backed the bill acknowledged child abandonment in Hawaii is rare but said creating a system of anonymity, confidentiality and freedom from prosecution for parents could encourage them to leave a newborn infant safely and thus save its life.
"It was a bill that I started out thinking, 'Well, that was a pretty good idea,'" Lingle told Scarborough yesterday. "But when you looked a little bit beneath the surface on those states that had passed these kinds of laws, in fact the number of abandoned babies went up."
"Really what this bill did is, it made it OK for people to abandon their children," Lingle said.
