Hospitals decline to release names of New Year’s babies

In an effort to ensure safety for newborn children and their families, area hospitals have enacted new policies to not to release the names of babies born on New Year’s Day.

This week, Baptist Health and Jackson Hospital in Montgomery announced they would no longer release the identities of infants born Jan. 1 after receiving data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) on infant abductions from hospitals.

“After studying these findings, our Directors of Women's Services at Baptist East and Baptist South have adopted a new policy and, for the protection of newborns and their families, we will neither be allowing media to interview parents nor show photos of any babies born on New Year's,” said Merrill South, spokesperson for Baptist Health, in an email to the Montgomery Advertiser.

South said that as part of the new policy, the hospital would only release the first name of the child and the time of birth.

Miranda Nobles, communications specialist for Jackson Hospital, said the NCMEC sent new statistics on infant abductions and that they could become more likely during the holidays. Nobles said that as a result, the hospital decided to enact the policy in order to protect the infants and their families.

“I guess maybe that is something that they have seen in the past and that we should work to examine our policies on releasing that information to the media,” Nobles said.

In December, NCMEC released a report detailing the number of infant abductions from hospitals and homes between 1983 and 2014. The report stated that in that time, there were a total of 296 infant kidnappings nationwide, including four in Alabama. The report stated that as of Dec. 19, there are 12 people who were kidnapped from either a hospital or home that have not been found yet.

Cathy Molchan Donald, state registrar and director of the Alabama Center for Health Statistics at the Alabama Department of Public Health, said a birth certificate is a confidential document with restricted access for 125 years from the date of birth.

“You have to be a member of the immediate family to get the birth certificate or any information of the birth,” Donald said.

As of Wednesday morning, there were approximately 56,887 children born across Alabama in 2014, according to Albert Woolbright, director of the ADPH’s Division of Statistical Analysis.

Woolbright said specific statistics on how many births were in each county during the year would be released sometime next August.