A North Texas newborn who was abandoned at a hospital under Texas’ safe haven law has sparked a custody dispute.
The infant, left days after birth, landed with Vincent and Lisa Blow in November after the Texas Department of Family Protective Services placed him with the couple, who expected quick adoption under the Baby Moses law.
Texas passed the nation’s first safe haven law in the late 1990s following abandonments that led to infant deaths. The measure allows anonymous drop-offs of babies under 2 months old at hospitals, fire stations, or freestanding emergency rooms if no abuse signs exist, speeding termination of parental rights for adoption.
“I cried going up in the elevator,” Lisa Blow recalled, according to CBS News Texas. “I was telling Vincent, ‘he’s ours, this is ours!’ And even when we introduced ourselves to the nurses, it was like, ‘Oh, you’re the parents.'”
The Blows, experienced in fostering, had taken in three boys and were adopting one. Lisa Blow’s sister fostered-to-adopt through the same agency; Vincent Blow works as a social worker, and his mother worked for Child Protective Services.
The couple initially sought children at least 6 weeks old for daycare compatibility, but accepted the newborn as a Baby Moses case.
“When we decided to do a newborn, we only really made that commitment because it was a Baby Moses,” Lisa Blow said, reported CBS News. “Through all of our trainings and talking to others, we learned that Baby Moses, that’s a for sure thing — that baby is going to be yours.”
“I was told by three different workers that they were like, ‘oh, he’s yours,'” Vincent Blow said, per CBS. “Mom surrendered rights, and that’s it.”
The boy has a birth defect potentially needing surgeries into his teens. Vincent Blow took six weeks off work as the family bonded over the holidays.
In February, DFPS informed the Blows that the birth mother, a college student who delivered with the father present before leaving the baby at the hospital, wanted him back after telling her parents. The maternal grandparents now seek custody.
“I fell on the ground and just started crying,” Lisa Blow said. “I kept asking, like, ‘how can this be? How can this be?’ I mean, we’ve had him for three months! How can this be?”
“From what we’ve been told, it’s really her parents pushing, and her parents not knowing that he even existed,” Lisa Blow said, per CBS News. “So we can’t help but wonder, what kind of relationship do they have? Was she not comfortable to share that she was expecting? And if they hadn’t found out, would she even want him back?”
Texas tracks abandonments by fiscal year; legal and illegal cases have fluctuated since 2018. The state does not monitor parental returns; DFPS quoted $451 and 8 weeks to develop such data, CBS News reported.
A DFPS spokesperson said such cases rarely occur. Family law attorney Rick Mitchell called it exceptional. “I don’t know the percentages, but it’s got to be 1 in 100, maybe more,” he said.
Mitchell, who has handled other Baby Moses cases but not this one, said relatives appearing before finalization have standard adoption rights.
“The grandparents were lucky to find this child, and the adoptive parents are really unlucky that it happened,” Mitchell said, per CBS News. “There’s no good answer, right? Somebody’s going to have to lose in this thing, and someone’s going to be heartbroken.”
The Baby Moses statute assumes no intent to return with voluntary surrender.
Lisa Blow wrote the birth mother.
“I wrote her a letter,” she said. “And I just told her in the letter that when we got him, we were told he was ours. And that’s why we named him. And I told her that the decision you made, I respect that. And I did tell her that, if you would like us to continue to parent him, we will include you in his journey forever.
“We would never not want him to know his biological family. But you know, he’s ours, and we just felt like there was nothing else for us to do.”
DFPS declined to comment, citing privacy. A custody hearing is set for April 16, per CBS News.