Wherever their thin cries go up, they make ghoulish headlines. Already this summer, newborns have been abandoned at a Washington, D.C., construction site and on a Pennsylvania roadside. Some have been found dead, others nearly so. Every state has its horror stories.

As of this month, most states have new laws designed to prevent such tragedies. Texas's "Baby Moses" law touched off the trend in 1999, after 13 abandonments in the Houston area in 10 months caused a public outcry. Since then, 45 states have adopted "safe haven" laws, allowing mothers to legally abandon newborns at hospitals and other designated places. They join a number of European countries - France, Germany, Italy, and Luxembourg, among them - that for some years have had similar laws.

Now, as states - Wyoming, most recently - continue to legalize child abandonment, they are coming under fire from adoption advocates and other critics. Though proponents mean well, critics say, the laws undermine established child welfare policy - and after four years, there is no clear evidence that they are helping.

"When I hear advocates say, 'If it saves just one baby's life, isn't it worth it?' I want to say: 'Yes! Of course it's worth it,' " says adoption expert Adam Pertman. "These cases pull so hard at our emotional heartstrings. But are these laws really saving babies? There's no research that says they are. And are they doing anything for their mothers? Yeah: They're sending them away."

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, three states - Alaska, Nebraska, and Vermont - have not yet considered legalizing infant abandonment. Massachusetts is currently debating the issue, and Hawaii's governor this month became the first in the nation to veto safe- haven legislation.

But the remaining 45 states almost all specify who can legally abandon a newborn (generally parents, though 13 states allow parents' "agents"), where they can be left (at hospitals, often at police and fire stations and churches, and occasionally in the care of a responsible adult), how young the child must be (less than three days in many states, less than 30 days in others, and up to several months in a few), and what legal protection the surrendering parent can expect (immunity from prosecution in about half the states, and a defense if charges are brought in the others).

When parents surrender their infants, almost half the states assign identification bracelets or make other provisions in case they have second thoughts. At the same time, fewer than half are required to offer information to those parents about counseling, support services, adoption, or parental rights. Most galling to adoption advocates is the fact that only 11 state laws require safe-haven personnel to request medical history and other personal information - as required by those states' adoption laws - from the person surrendering the child.

Recently, such concerns have also been at issue in France. The country's 1941 né sous X, or "born under X," law upholds a tradition of unprosecuted abandonment by unidentified mothers begun after the 1789 revolution. Unlike Italy and Luxembourg, France does not require hospitals to record family and medical histories of sous X infants, or allow children access to these records when they reach a certain age.

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