Until a legal notice about the abandoned baby “Alexis Safe Haven” was published in this newspaper recently, we didn’t know Maine had a “Safe Haven” law. In retrospect, this was a good thing; safe haven is one of those laws that are best when unused.

Under safe haven in Maine, children less than one month old can be surrendered to certain authorities, such as police or medical personnel (of all stripes, even dentists.) The goal is the safety of an innocent child, if parental circumstances are so desperate as to jeopardize its care.

But there’s a limit. One month only. Thirty days to decide, after which the child becomes the parent or parents’ responsibility. Some would say even 30 days are too much, as the choice to bring a child into this world is the ultimate acceptance of responsibility for its welfare.

Given Maine’s law has only been used a few times since it was enacted in 2002, we’d say the law is working as designed, maybe better. Surrendering a child is not to be taken lightly; its rarity indicates Maine parents – regardless of circumstance – know their duty.

Which, as the nation found out recently, is not always the case.

Last year, Nebraska lawmakers were shocked to discover their new safe haven law – which lacked an age limit – spurred abandonments of children from across the country within their borders. In one much publicized case, a father and his two teenagers from Miami, Fla., flew to Omaha, where he bid his kids goodbye.

The calamitous policy was quickly fixed, but not until Nebraska illustrated a hurtful lesson: that some parents will go to great lengths to abandon their kids. This doesn’t say so much about safe haven laws as it does about the darker corners of human nature.

Yet Nebraska proved one thing: Safe haven laws must have strict limits, because they must only be used in the most desperate of cases, for the most vulnerable of children. Depressingly, some parents have shown that, if given an out, they will even fly cross-country to use it.

The law shouldn’t allow that. What it should allow, as Maine does, is the protection of infants from potentially dangerous circumstances, and give a relief valve for parents for whom parenthood is either impossible, overwhelming or – most probably – both.

In this latter scenario, Maine’s law is working. The process looks sound, the outcomes appropriate and the stakeholders prepared. We hadn’t heard of this law before and, now that we have, we’re certainly glad that it’s around.

What would be even better is not having to hear about it again.